Chapter 590 – Episode 582. Coronation. (2)
[… Oz strikes out Choi Jin-cheol! One out! … Seongtae Yoon’s batted ball! High! Ah! Kim Joo-yeop’s nice catch! Catch it! Kim Joo-yeop, the center fielder of the Hwasan Falcons who catches a hit!]
[Wow, Ji Maeng-ho showed good defense in the bottom of the first inning, but this time Kim Joo-yeop showed good defense.]
[Both teams show off their skills one after another as if competing! It looks like a Korean series.]
[Actually, the Hwasan Falcons are tied 3-0, but when you look at the content of the game, it’s not surprising who wins, right? It is a Korean series that is truly enjoyable to the eyes.]
[Now the batter is No. 6 batter Kim Hyun-seong… Out! Following the first inning, Frank Oz ends the inning with a three-way strike! The game now goes to the bottom of the second inning! … 7th batter Kim Hyeong-geon comes to the plate. … Out. … Strike out! … Strike out! Unlike the shaky first inning, Park Jun-hyung ended the inning with a triple strike, striking out two times in a row!]
[Park Jun-hyung, it looks like you have come to your senses? Among fans, there is a saying that Park Jun-hyung’s condition improves when he gets slapped by Ji Maeng-ho, and he has definitely been showing good pitching since getting slapped by Ji Maeng-ho in the first inning.]
[Now, at the beginning of the third inning, it is AT’s attack. … Out, … Out! Now at bat is the number 9 hitter, Kim Soo-ho. … The first pitch is a ball. A fastball that hits a high position. The speed was 154 km/h.]
“Good! Let’s just keep going like this!”
After 8 consecutive batters were out, first pitch ball. Lee Yong-gi, who was receiving Oz’s ball, was worried that Oz, who had poor ball control, might suddenly shake, so he threw the ball and gave Oz a word of encouragement.
And Oz nods. Although the two people could only communicate briefly through words, their hearts were connected.
‘Wow, Kim Soo-ho’s at bat…’
But even in that situation, Lee Yong-gi couldn’t help but feel anxious in a corner of his mind. The current batter was Kim Soo-ho, who had the best batting eye in the country, and the batter waiting behind him was Ji Maeng-ho.
If Kim Su-ho is given a walk here, Ji Maeng-ho will step in with a runner on base. If it were normal, in a situation with 2 outs and 1st base, I would have just skipped Ji Maeng-ho and competed with the back hitter, but not today.
Because of what coach Moon Ki-taek said before the game started, before a game that might be the last.
-“Honestly, you win with a reverse sweep at 3-0? You all probably know that it’s not easy. However, I don’t think our team is weak. I believe that this is a team that can easily aim for the championship next year and the year after. And to do that, you have to stop one person. You guys know that too, right? This is Ji Maeng-ho. If we just stop Ji Maeng-ho, we can win. It was like losing to Ji Maeng-ho in the first game, the second game, and yesterday’s game as well. So, feel Ji Maeng-ho properly today. And don’t forget today’s memories. Let’s think together for a year about how we can beat Ji Maeng-ho, and aim for the championship next year.”
Honestly, from the starting catcher Lee Yong-gi’s perspective, he thought the right answer was to skip Ji Maeng-ho in a situation with two outs or a runner in front, but he said that in front of the players, whose eyes were shining and their will to win was burning after hearing the manager’s words. I couldn’t do it.
In addition, the team’s morale rose as they caught Ji Maeng-ho in the first inning… In such a situation, you filter out Ji Maeng-ho at will? That couldn’t be possible.
Therefore, when greeting Ji Maeng-ho, I wanted to welcome him in a situation where there were no runners, and to do that, I had to cleanly catch Kim Su-ho, who was currently standing at bat.
“Ball.”
… However, Kim Su-ho was Kim Su-ho.
‘Fuck, doesn’t this guy get old? Usually, when you get older, you go to Seonguan first, but are you going to skip this?’
It seemed like about half a ball had slipped out of the zone. It was an incredible ball thrown by Oz, who had poor control, but Kim Su-ho caught the ball and created a two-ball, no-strike situation.
‘This time it’s a fastball. Let’s boldly insert it into the zone.’
Kim Su-ho still boasts a top-level pitching ability in the league, but as a 35-year-old veteran, his response to fast balls is not very good. In particular, Kim Soo-ho showed a more difficult performance when the speed of the fast ball was in the mid-150s like Oz’s, so Lee Yong-gi requested a fastball that would hit the zone.
“Ball.”
But Oz’s third ball was also a ball. On the stage of the Korean Series, Oz’s ball, which required more force than usual to hit a fastball in the zone, strayed far outside the zone, and Kim Soo-ho had no reason to swing his bat at such a ball.
Seeing that scene, Lee Yong-gi had only one thought in his head.
‘… I’m screwed.’
“Strike!”
Fortunately, I put a breaking ball in the zone,
“Base on balls!”
Since the count was already high, the result of a walk could not be changed. The moment when ominous imagination becomes reality. Even the catcher felt like he was breaking into a cold sweat.
‘I want to skip it…’ .’
I looked at the dugout, but there was no sign from the manager. The fact that there is no sign means that we should compete as we said before today’s game. Lee Yong-gi quickly thought about the unknown information about Ji Maeng-ho.
‘If you hit one outside your body, you can turn it into a home run, so if you want to get the ball out, there are at least two… Because it’s an upper swing, I’m weak to high balls, but unless I have the speed of Jang Woo-joo or Tinie, I’m not easily fooled. If it’s in the zone, it’s a home run. Also… Uh…, Fuck. Still, when I looked at it before, it seemed like it would be hard to push past someone with Kim Won-ho’s level, but oh, that was Jamsil, right? The only course where you can get a bad hit is in the lower corner of the zone, but if the pitch is weak, you can pass it up… Hmm…, But the pitch was good today, so I got a hit in my first at-bat.
But honestly, it would be difficult for Oz to keep putting him in the corner since he isn’t Hyun-hyung… I confirmed that fighting in numbers doesn’t work.’
Ji Maeng-ho’s weakness is that a pitcher with Seong-hyeon’s level of ball control hits it accurately in the corner of the zone, a pitcher with Jang Woo-joo’s level of speed hits a high fastball, or a pitcher with Kim Won-ho’s level of pitch control hits Jamsil with an outside ball. Inducing.
No, it was natural for Seong Hyun, Jang Woo-joo, and Kim Won-ho to go over the fence if they got a chance against Ji Maeng-ho, so a pitcher who combined the strengths of all three was needed to completely stop him.
‘Fuck, there’s no answer.’
And if Oz was a pitcher who could do that, he would have been playing in the majors, so he had no reason to come to Korea.
… Or, fight back in a battle of numbers against the world’s best guess hitter.
‘… Okay, fuck it, I’ll just win the fight… Fuck.’
“Hi.”
While Lee Yong-gi was organizing his thoughts, Ji Maeng-ho came to bat.
*
“If you’re going to skip it, do it quickly. Don’t just take out 4 balls.”
“Baby, look at the way you talk? Are you going to compete?”
“Hey, you’re saying something you don’t mean for no reason.”
‘Anyway, this guy says this is the problem. He’s playing psychological warfare that doesn’t work by betting anyway.’
Although it was a bit annoying to always talk like this and engage in psychological warfare, it was still quite enjoyable to talk to the catcher. Because there were a lot of catchers in the league who didn’t even accept my greetings.
To be honest, since I was filled with the spirit of Confucianism to my core, I was always the type to say hello first, but if you don’t accept the greeting and ignore it, no matter how nice the people are, you’re bound to get a little hurt.
‘What about the first pitch?’
‘It’s a fastball.’
‘Then yes. If this is going to be the case, why aren’t they automatically filtered out as intentional phrases?’
The first pitch chosen by the Hwasan Battery was a fastball. It wasn’t a regular game and there was no need to come out and win the game with 1 run and 2 outs and 1st base, so I decided to watch the first pitch because it was natural to skip it with a walk.
“Strike!”
But the first pitch is a strike. And the speed stamped on the electronic display board was 156 km/h. It was very close to the guy’s highest velocity.
“Huh?”
“I said I would win?”
“Wow, this is really coming in. Okay. I will hit it properly.”
Putting the ball in the zone with full power? This ball means only one thing. I called time for a moment and woke up by doing my routine again.
‘Mr. Rossby, what about the next ball?’
‘Wait. ‘It seems like you have a lot to worry about.’
‘Okay.’
Wait a moment. And when the wait was over, Mr. Rossby’s voice was heard again.
‘It’s a slider.’
‘Okay.’
The first pitch is a fastball that goes toward the body. The next ball is a slider. When Oz, a right-handed pitcher, throws a slider, it means that he will throw a slider that lands in a similar position toward the body or a slider that runs away to the outside to induce a missed swing.
No matter what, even if I hit both balls, the chances of getting a good hit were not high, and I didn’t want to end up in a fight with a low chance of winning in a chance that rarely comes, so I chose to wait this time as well.
“Ball.”
As a result of waiting, the second ball is a slider that falls towards the body.
“Oh, twice on the body? “Are you crazy?”
“Speak informally?”
“What did you say to the pitcher?”
“Oz is older than you too, dude.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Throwing to the inside twice means that it is time to throw to the outside. However, it was too early to jump to conclusions because the catcher was Lee Yong-gi.
‘It’s a fastball.’
‘Fastball… It’s one and one, so watch it one more time? Since there is no need to throw a curveball with the crystal ball, we rule it out, and then we build up the splitter… If I do this, I will get great results, right?’
The thought of leaving an afterimage of a high fastball in my eyes and using the splitter as the deciding ball. When I made up my mind that I would hit him once I got inside the zone, a feeling of anxiety crept up in a corner of my mind.
‘… But would Lee Yong-gi make such an obvious combination?’
Climbing the Bridge of Oz without even having time to organize my thoughts.
‘Hey, I don’t fucking know.’
In this case, the surest way is to just watch and play without thinking too much! As Oz’s legs touched the ground, the ball was thrown from his right hand.
‘Uh… ?’
Is it because I threw away all my complicated thoughts? His ball seems slower than expected, and it feels like there are threads showing. Direction is outside corner. And as soon as I thought about it, the bat was already reaching towards the ball.
Ta – Aak!
A clear hitting sound resounds from the bat… The batted ball was disappearing like a laser toward the left wall. A home run that was almost straight into the stands just seconds after seeing the ball hit.
‘It was good.’
And then an unexpected voice was heard. Mr. Rossby was the only voice that resonated in my brain like this, but the words were so unexpected that I had no choice but to question Mr. Rossby’s words.
‘Yes?’
I’ve received a lot of compliments while playing baseball, but this kind of praise for just one home run… It was because it was so unfamiliar.
‘You idiot. Are your ears clogged? ‘I hit it well, you deaf bastard.’
“Ah… Yes.”
To the blatant compliment that I played well, I ended up answering in a voiceless voice without realizing it.
“What, suddenly? “What am I doing? It’s not running.”
And Lee Yong-gi, who heard my voice, was urging me to quickly walk to first base.
‘Remember the sensation now.’
‘Ah…, I understand.’
Although Mr. Rossby’s compliment was unexpected, the feeling left in my hand reminded me of what Mr. Rossby was talking about. What Mr. Rossby emphasized so much was to clear your head and hit the ball… It’s happened a few times now, but it’s never been as stuck in my mind as it was today.
‘This feeling right now…’
It’s been 4 years since I’ve been with Mr. Rossby. I finally felt like I knew something.