Seventy-five days had passed since Suho was released.

Instead of the farm team’s field, he sweated his way through a run-down batting cage near his boarding house.

Through days of waiting that wore him down to nothing, the only thing he waited on was his American visa.

“Wow. That’s rough.”

He’d finished training and come back to his room drenched in sweat when a text arrived.

He read it and his hand closed into a fist.

“Yes! The visa came through!”

A B-1. A short-stay visa permitting non-commercial activity in the United States.

The thing he had waited on for so long, the thing he absolutely had to have in order to grab even a thread of an opportunity in America, had finally been issued.

“So at least I’ve got the credentials now.”

Suho’s goal was one thing only.

A minor league contract with a major league organization.

Deciding to go to America didn’t mean he was aiming at the majors. Could a player released from the KBO farm system suddenly become a major leaguer just by crossing the ocean?

Nobody knew better than Suho how far outside reality that was.

All he wanted was to improve.

That, and to take the measure of his own talent by learning major league hitting mechanics.

A minor league contract is plenty.

Someone might ask whether he was really going all the way to America over mechanics.

But they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know how much it matters in this game.

In America they treat it as the most important thing there is.

Mechanics, put simply, is how force gets transferred.

Like the steel that holds up a building.

However dazzling the talent you’re born with, if the frame isn’t sound it comes down in the end.

A player whose mechanics waver can’t hold on to his own ability.

A wrist turned a fraction, an elbow angle off by a hair, and in baseball the result changes completely.

The best players in the majors don’t post consistent numbers simply because their talent is greater.

It’s because they can repeat the exact mechanics that fit them, over and over.

Talent can run into a wall someday. Mechanics never betray a player for as long as he plays.

Which is why America takes it so seriously.

The volume of analysis, research, and established theory there is beyond comparison with any other country.

So maybe, in a place like that, there was a set of mechanics that fit him.

That was why he’d decided to go.

And credit to me, too, for studying English just to understand what they were saying in the film I was breaking down.

Whatever the reason.

The work he’d put in to survive, to get his hands on even a thread of hope, had ended up being the thing that let him keep the dream.

In any case, there was only one way for Suho to get a minor league contract now.

Tryouts. From what I found, the first open tryout is two weeks out, right?

Open tryouts.

Up until 2015, Major League Baseball ran open tryouts itself.

That practice had been dead a long time.

These days clubs found undrafted players strictly through their own internal networks.

Which left independent league tryouts as the only thing Suho could realistically enter.

He was entering an independent league tryout, but he had no intention of actually playing in an independent league. That was fine.

Because scouts from major league clubs come to these. Catch their eye and you can get a minor league deal.

So Suho’s first objective was to be seen by the major league scouts at the independent tryout.

He’d already put together a résumé for exactly this, and it took him no time to submit applications for three tryouts in August from his phone.

Good. Applications are in…

All that was left was getting himself to America.

Suho looked around the tiny boarding-house room he’d moved into the moment the club let him go.

His bat and glove sat there, the only equipment he owned.

“That’s the whole of my luggage.”

That and a few changes of clothes was all of it.

“Just need the plane ticket. Get over there as soon as possible.”

Better to go a day early and give himself time to adjust to the time difference, the food, the surroundings.

He pulled up an airline site on his phone and paid for the ticket.

Another two weeks passed after Suho landed in America.

The day of the tryout. He left the hotel he’d been staying in.

“Twenty minutes on foot from here to Raimondi Park, right?”

Raimondi Park was the home field of an independent club called the Oakland Ballers. It was where his first tryout would be held.

Suho’s eyes went wide when he arrived.

“Wow. That’s a lot of people.”

At a rough count it was well past a hundred.

The independent leagues drew from a completely different pool than the majors or the minors.

Most of them were players who’d been broken somewhere, or rehabbing an injury.

Or amateurs whose talent had never bloomed, gathered here with their last hope riding on it.

Suho put his surprise aside and headed for the registration desk first.

“Excuse me…”

The woman at the desk stopped writing and looked up at him.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“I registered for the tryout.”

She blinked slowly. It looked like disbelief, though Suho didn’t especially mind the way she was looking at him.

I’m Asian, for one thing. And also…

One look at the size of the players around him and he understood her perfectly.

Shoulders out to here and forearms thick enough to block his view even sitting down.

What are they eating to grow like that?

Suho was 6 feet even and 161 pounds. Closer to a model’s build than a ballplayer’s, arguably.

The others here for the tryout were taller than him and carried anywhere from twenty to seventy pounds more.

The woman wiped the surprise off her face and asked:

“Name.”

“Suho Oh.”

“Suho. Suho… ah, here you are. Entry fee is a hundred and twenty dollars. Pay that and you can head inside.”

Suho took out his wallet, handed over the money, and went in.

Then he found the emptiest stretch of seating and sat down.

When does this start?

He glanced back toward the desk he’d come through.

Still a crowd checking in.

At least fifty more. Today looked like a hundred and fifty entrants, minimum.

Going to be a while before we start.

He couldn’t afford to waste time this valuable, though.

No — he shouldn’t.

Loosen up and pick up some information while I’m at it.

Suho fixed his eyes on a man sitting off to his right. A Black man, and even seated, clearly a big one.

Suho drifted around behind him and tapped his shoulder.

“Hey.”

The man turned around slowly.

“Oh. Hey. I’m Mark. So are you Japanese?”

Mark greeted him with immediate warmth.

Suho had noticed one thing since arriving in America: people here treated a total stranger like a friend.

“No. Korean.”

“Oh, Korea. I know Korea! Kimchi fried in the pork belly grease — takes the heat right out, tastes great. What’s your name?”

Suho couldn’t get his mouth closed.

Hearing a Black American tell him kimchi fried in pork belly grease was good.

You really do learn something new every day.

Suho was still in his early twenties.

“I’m Suho. Suho Oh.”

“Oh! Suho? Good name.”

“How— how would you know it’s a good name?”

“If it’s easy to say, it’s good. Right? Anyway, your English is solid. You been living here?”

Suho shook his head.

“First time in America.”

“First time? So you lived somewhere else English-speaking?”

“No. This is the first time I’ve left Korea.”

Mark frowned.

“And your English is that good? Where’d you learn it?”

“Taught myself.”

“Must’ve been a good student. Anyway — you’re trying out today?”

Suho nodded.

Mark looked him up and down and frowned again.

“You can play ball with that body? Looks like you’d snap if somebody tapped you…”

Suho opened his mouth and shut it again.

Because if Mark tapped him, he probably would snap. Mark was built that well.

“I’m better than I look. And you don’t play this game with your size, do you?”

Better than I look. He wasn’t, in fact. But what he needed right now was confidence.

“Sure, but… aren’t you too skinny? Mookie Betts, and that man was incredible — he was five-ten, a hundred eighty pounds.”

Mookie Betts. A legend, in Mark’s telling.

Small himself, by ballplayer standards. Five foot ten, a hundred seventy-nine pounds.

Suho was thinner still, was Mark’s point.

“I can put on size.”

“Yeah, but the problem is now! Independent league tryout or not… there are guys here throwing 93!”

Ninety-three. Suho wasn’t especially impressed.

Because there were plenty of pitchers in Korea now who could reach that.

The number was smaller on the farm, sure, but it wasn’t as though he’d never faced it.

And back in high school he’d faced any number of amateurs who threw harder than that.

Before Suho could answer, Mark was going again.

“Suho. You have no idea how fast 93 is, do you?”

He did. But what he needed was information.

And the surest way to get information out of someone is to let them lead.

“No, not really. Mark, do you?”

“‘Course I do. Because I’m American. Went to high school here, and 93 is something you see all the time.”

“Can you handle 93, Mark?”

Mark’s eyes wavered for a second. Then he thumped his fist against his left breast.

“Ha. No problem. I was the best hitter in my high school. You know the High School Invitational, the biggest tournament in the country? Huh? You know what I did there?”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“Base hits! Home runs! All of it!”

“Then why—”

“Ah… why am I here? Injury. Got hurt my senior season.”

The mood dropped for a moment.

Suho stuck a thumb up in a hurry, trying to get out from under it.

“Anyone would’ve been crushed by that. That’s really something. You didn’t quit — you’re still running at it.”

Mark scratched the back of his head, a little embarrassed.

“Come on, it’s not that big a deal! But yeah, you’re right. Doctor said there’s nothing stopping me playing again. And I’ve still got plenty of time, so I want to get there fast.”

“How old are you, Mark?”

“Twenty.”

“…Right.”

“Huh? What? How old are you, Suho?”

“I’m twenty-four…”

Mark’s eyes went wide.

“That old? You look like a middle schooler. High schooler at best—”

“Sorry for being ancient.”

Suho gave a wry smile, but his eyes didn’t waver.

To him twenty-four wasn’t a reason to quit. It was the point at which you burn the last of the fire.

Twenty-four is not old.

At twenty-four a prospect is still judged to have room to grow.

Major league clubs did treat the age as a kind of line in the sand, though.

For a teenager or a player in his early twenties, technical flaws are forgivable; clubs will invest for the long term on potential alone.

At twenty-four, the growth curve is considered largely set.

The American system in particular manages players in fine detail from the moment they finish high school.

Fundamentals and mechanics get established early, and ability is brought up in stages from there.

So a foreign player arriving in America at twenty-four…

…gets written off as too set in his habits to fix technically.

Which left clubs expecting immediate returns from a twenty-four-year-old.

Fail to prove it in the numbers within a year or two and the interest evaporates fast.

That was exactly what Mark had been worried about.

And Suho was well aware of the reality of it.

He’d chosen America to seize the last chance he had — one where he’d be forced to prove himself quickly.

“Damn it. Running my mouth right before your tryout…”

Mark was sincerely sorry about it.

Suho only smiled.

“It’s fine. I told you, didn’t I? I’m good at this. I’ll show you today, so keep your eyes open.”

Was that a thing a man who’d been drowning in the KBO farm system got to say? Wasn’t the confidence baseless?

He’d been released over his hitting, no less.

And still Suho was sure of himself.

I saw plenty of mid-nineties stuff on the farm.

He’d seen it on amateur fields in high school, too.

Suho had played in Korea’s top amateur tournament back then, and it was full of genuinely excellent pitchers.

And.

I hit home runs off that kind of stuff. Plenty of them.

Today would be no different.

Suho was confident he could put a hit on 93.

Because this isn’t Korea.

The moment he was released, he no longer had to worry about the hitting coach’s eyes on him.

And he hadn’t spent the two and a half months waiting on the visa doing nothing.

For a tryout, where results are the only currency, he’d poured everything into getting back to the swing he’d had at his best — the high school swing that got him signed as a pro.

And he’d managed it.

Now, taking stock of everything Mark had said.

He’s talking about 93 like it’s some incredible pitch.

Ninety-three is a good pitch, plainly.

But the way Mark said it, it sounded like the ceiling around here.

Which meant this stage was—

—well below the level of the KBO farm system.

If he could get his own ability out on the field, catching the eye of the scouts here was well within reach.

End of Chapter 2