The Pitcher Just Hits Home Runs Well [EN]: Chapter 156

156. Forget the Cherry Blossoms Now (3)

The moment I hit the ball, I felt an unpleasant jolt, and I thought I was in trouble. Fortunately, the defensive positioning and the runner’s steps all worked in my favor.

A clean RBI single.

“Wow, he’s relentless. Relentless. He’s forcing himself to hit again. If you came out as a pitcher, shouldn’t there be some time to relax?”

“I wanted to, but I rested enough when I came out as a batter. I still have to earn my keep.”

“Hey, you’ve already earned more than you’ve been paid. You’re getting the minimum salary as a rookie. What are you talking about, earning your keep?”

“I received 2 billion won in signing bonus.”

“That’s a bit different. Who calculates the signing bonus like that? You’re going to spread that out over five years for tax purposes anyway. So, your performance should be divided into five years, only 400 million won each year.”

Such pointless conversations went back and forth.

“No, what is that… Ack!!”

-Thwack!!

A clean pickoff throw.

Wow, that was really close.

“Too bad.”

“Wow, isn’t that pickoff throw too fierce? If I didn’t know that the senior was trying to distract me with useless talk to keep me from focusing on the pickoff, I would have been in big trouble.”

“……. Wow, I think you have one of the top five biggest mouths I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment to work harder.”

-Clang!!

Noh Hyung-wook’s hit.

The moment of impact, my body was already moving towards second base. Honestly, it wasn’t great timing. The guys who are really good at running bases have something subtly faster in their timing than just speed. And they seem to have a faster initial acceleration. Besides, even at my peak, my base running was below league average.

But still, I’m a hitter with 17 years of professional experience and counting. With the addition of a nineteen-year-old’s body, I can confidently say that I’m above average even if I went to the Big Leagues [Major League Baseball] right now.

I watched the direction of the batted ball as I ran quickly.

It’s definitely easier to predict the trajectory of a batted ball from here than watching it fly in from the outfield. This is a ball that’s going to get through. I slightly shifted my weight to the left. Speed and turning radius. I stepped on second base and ran towards third base at the most appropriate point I’d gained through experience.

In the meantime, Lee Jung-hoon, who started ahead of me, is incredibly fast.

He’s already running 1/3 of the way between third base and home. I also added power to my running speed. The third base is quickly approaching. Oh, but?

[Ah!! It got through!! The ball bounces away!! The center fielder catches it!! To second base!!]

The third base coach waved his arm.

I didn’t wonder what was happening behind me. I just ran mechanically with all my might. 270 feet from first base to home. About 83 meters.

It wasn’t a short distance, even though it was less than 100 meters. I had to make two sharp 90-degree turns. My body leaned sharply to the left. My hamstrings throbbed as if they were about to explode. My body was definitely healthy. If I had done this kind of base running before, my knees would have ached, but there was none of that.

I ran towards home.

The catcher is standing forward. Of course, half of the home plate is open behind him. A posture where he can receive the ball and turn around at any time.

I dove towards home plate.

A stretched-out hand.

Even though I was wearing a runner’s mitt, the fact that it could still be dangerous was already out of my mind. Putting aside the importance of today’s game, could I really hold back in a situation where I could score? No way. Even if it’s just a neighborhood baseball game, I’ll do my best to win. That’s the competitive spirit of a professional player who lives in a dichotomous world where everything is divided into victory and defeat.

-Thwack!!

The throw relayed into the catcher’s mitt just before my hand touched home plate. His body rotated quickly. But I’m faster. The slightly shifted leg blocked home plate, but it was okay. I twisted my body, which was skimming the ground, to create a slight rotation. About 30 degrees with my left hand as the axis. My right hand touched home plate, avoiding the catcher’s leg that was blocking it.

“Safe!!!”

I got up and brushed the dirt off my chest.

My body was a little tired, but what should I say? I felt refreshed. My nineteen-year-old body is really in great shape. I realized again that I could run this far.

Anyway, the score is 3:0.

Uh… but…

“Senior?”

“……. Let’s just go in. You scored safely at home thanks to me, though.”

Noh Hyung-wook, this guy…

No, how can a first base runner be out at second base when he came all the way to home? It’s not like he’s Senior Kyu-man, although Senior Kyu-man wouldn’t have run all the way to second base for something like this… Anyway, it’s obvious that he didn’t originally intend to run to second base, but he got out while belatedly running to second base because the outfielder over there missed the ball.

Well, it wasn’t a force out situation, so it seems right that I was able to safely enter home because the second baseman tagged this guy for a moment. Wait a minute. But then, if it wasn’t for this guy’s boneheaded play, my run would have been a boneheaded play?

The third base coach smiles awkwardly.

Wow, I can only say it’s the Marines.

After that, Senior Kyu-man fought hard with an unexpected hit, but Seo Kyung-joon cleanly hit an outfield fly, ending our attack in the bottom of the first inning.

***

Kim Jin-gyu, a scout from the New York Mets who captured all these scenes with a camera, wrote down a few more things on his tablet. It was hard to say that his base running sense was very good. But his athletic ability was pretty good and clean. The only downside is that his play is too aggressive?

In Major League Baseball, they would never ask a player of that caliber to make such a base running play. He is literally a core resource of the team who receives a huge annual salary. Of course, the annual salary is covered to some extent by insurance if he goes on the DL [disabled list], but the team’s performance cannot be helped with that insurance money.

But still, I think that his daring base running gave me a good opportunity to check one good thing today.

Most of his current skills have been proven…

“No, no. He’s still playing in the AA [Double-A] level, so it’s a bit too much to say he’s proven.”

He shook his head again as he muttered to himself.

“No, even if it’s an average AA level, there were definitely Big League-level players among the players he faced. Besides, even if it’s the AA league, if he’s destroying the league to this extent, I should say he’s proven it.”

Anyway, just one thing among Choi Soo-won’s skills.

The only negative, or something close to a question mark, was his stamina.

The stamina of basketball or American football is a bit different from the stamina of baseball.

It was similar to the difference between a short-distance run and a long-distance marathon. Just like you can only know the stamina in a marathon after passing the halfway point, stamina in baseball is basically something you can only know after at least July or August.

But there was only one position.

There was a position that required a similar kind of stamina to basketball or American football, even though he was a baseball player, and that was the starting pitcher who appears once every five days.

And Choi Soo-won proved it in his own way in the last game. Through a 9-inning shutout.

However, he broke his routine immediately after that and rested for two days, Saturday and Sunday. Considering that Monday was even a day off, he rested for three days. Besides, the appearances he showed at the plate after the 7th inning were clearly showing that he was physically struggling.

Above all, looking at that physique. Looking at that physique, which is quite small compared to his height, I can’t help but wonder if that performance itself is really the result of squeezing the body’s performance to the limit. In that sense, the fact that he showed so much physically demanding play from the first inning today could be a good opportunity to resolve his curiosity.

Top of the 2nd inning.

Choi Soo-won went back to the mound.

***

Unfortunately, there was no perfect game or no-hitter.

But I decided to give meaning to becoming a pitcher who breaks a 4-game losing streak.

So far, my season record is 21 innings, 3 runs allowed, 2 earned runs.

Now that it’s come to this, I have no choice but to aim for a real record that takes not only the simple MVP [Most Valuable Player award] but also the Choi Dong-won Award [award given to the best pitcher in the KBO League] all at once.

The Griffins’ fourth batter stepped up to the plate.

Carlos Edwin.

A man from Mexico who is currently the Griffins’ right fielder and a traditional right-handed slugger. 191cm and 127kg according to his profile.

But he doesn’t feel fat at all. A giant who seems to be full of muscles.

That man is one of the reasons why I can’t definitively call Dilton the strongest in Korea in terms of combat power.

If Dilton Dooley is in the United States, should I say that Carlos Edwin is in Mexico? If Dilton had chosen baseball instead of wrestling and came to Korea, Carlos originally dreamed of becoming a Lucha Libre [Mexican professional wrestling], a Mexican professional wrestler, but he gave up because he grew too tall and played baseball, thanks to which he came to Korea.

The bat he holds in his hand is the largest and heaviest bat within the regulations, but it still feels like a toothpick.

-Whoosh

A light practice swing.

His posture wasn’t very good, but the immense power in that bat definitely gave me the feeling that it would go over if he hit it.

Well, it’ll probably go over even if he hits it off the end of the bat. His power is honestly a foul.

For reference, I’m not talking about a foul in a rhetorical sense.

It’s literally a foul. He’s on a full dose of steroids and growth hormones. He somehow got through the doping tests when he joined in the second half of last year and at the beginning of this year, but he was properly caught in a surprise doping test just before the All-Star break, received a 36-game suspension, and was waived that day.

But that’s only the future that hasn’t happened yet.

First of all, it was right to think of what I had to face as something like a gorilla with a bat. I didn’t want to argue about whether it was a foul or not. Honestly, it was closer to a foul that a nineteen-year-old’s body had the experience of a Hall of Fame-level hitter in the Major League. In fact, the results were showing that.

But at least the one standing on the mound right now was not Choi Soo-won, a hitter with Major League experience. It’s Choi Soo-won, a pitcher who is not even able to bring out the maximum skill that the original nineteen-year-old pitcher Choi Soo-won could have produced, thanks to the fact that the continuity of that experience has been cut off.

Jo Yu timidly asked for a curveball that fell as the first pitch.

I liked it.

Honestly, it doesn’t make sense to tell me to have a head-on match with that size. Besides, he’s a batter who obviously has the weakness of swinging at any ball.

First pitch.

A curveball that drops sharply.

-Whoosh!!!

A swing that didn’t contain a hint of hesitation cut through the air.

Not bad.

‘Huh? A second one too?’

Jo Yu nodded with a confident look.

Okay, I’ll trust you.

Second.

Another curveball that drops sharply.

-Whoosh!!!!!!!

What?

Is he stupid?

It was the exact same ball as before, but he swung again?

Carlos stepped away from the plate for a moment and swung his bat around.

It’s brutal.

Besides, the way he smiles is really like a villain wrestler himself. No matter how I look at it, he should have given up Lucha Libre and gone to American professional wrestling as a villain instead of playing baseball. Besides, it’s not a world where you get kicked out for taking drugs, so it would have been good for everyone.

Third.

Jo Yu looked at me with a really trustworthy expression. Honestly, that seemed a bit like acting, but anyway, I nodded.

What he asked for was a high fastball on the inside.

It wasn’t a bad ball to show after two slow balls that dropped sharply.

A big windup.

I threw away all the frustration I felt when throwing with a slide step in the previous defensive inning. Besides, I felt good because I had a good time running bases in the previous offensive inning.

Just a fast and strong ball.

161.3km/h

A ball that was 0.2km/h faster than my best record flew. Of course, the course wasn’t the high inside course I wanted, but it was a bit centered.

-Clang!!!

Carlos’s bat hit my ball.

Even though it was a glancing blow, it was really crazy power that flew straight up.

Lee Joo-hyuk ran straight.

In a direction that wasn’t wrong at all.

He was so fast that he ran, looked at the ball once, took three steps forward again, and caught the ball. Still, I’m glad that’s where it is. Lee Joo-hyuk, who used to turn the direction twice with his unique zigzag defense and eventually let the ball fall in the wrong place and give up a hit, has improved that much.

Anyway, it was a fairly clean outfield fly out for Lee Joo-hyuk.

From the 2nd to the 3rd and 4th innings.

I didn’t give up a single point while the Griffins’ batting order went around almost twice.