When the tying run came across, the Quakes broadcast team couldn’t keep the excitement out of their voices.

—An RBI double! Number 79, Suho Oh, and we are tied at one apiece! But Bill. That ball just now… what on earth was that?

John Miller called it without trying to hide his excitement.

His partner, Bill Heywood, was plainly rattled himself.

—I’m sitting here doubting my own eyes.

—The report had him down as a 20 at the plate…

—It did…

A 20 on a scouting report means a man is below the level of the league.

His bat speed is so slow that he can’t beat the life on the ball.

He has no ability to catch it on the barrel.

No contact, in other words, and no feel for putting force into it at impact, so all he produces is a weak ground ball or a lazy fly.

That is a 20 hitter.

The color man went on.

—That ball was not hit by a 20 hitter. It wasn’t a mis-hit either, he caught it flat on the barrel. And above all, that bat speed is outstanding. And the exit velocity! For a ground ball, not a line drive, to go through the hole between the second baseman and the right fielder like that… I’m sorry. I don’t know enough to explain to you how that happens.

These two were still dreamers themselves.

Unlike the professionals calling major league games, they had gaps in what they knew, and there was nothing to be done about it.

—So the bottom line is, he is not a 20 hitter! Is that it?

—That’s it. On that one point at least, I’ll stake my reputation on it.

—And his real weapon hasn’t even come out yet!

Play resumed after that.

And out on the mound the pitcher was breaking into a cold sweat.

Damn it. Now that kid’s standing on second. They told me he couldn’t hit!

How is that not being able to hit?

That wasn’t a man swinging a bat and producing a batted ball.

That was an exit velocity like somebody had loaded the thing into a bazooka and fired it.

And the real problem started now.

Because this was number 79, the one who had broken the composure of a super-elite prospect like Cade.

It had been on the information sheet before the game, too — the legs were insanely fast.

The pitcher looked over at his dugout, on edge.

A sign came back.

Ignore the runner and go after the hitter?

Right. That was the better way.

It was a sound decision.

No sense worrying about a runner with the legs of a cheetah and getting hit around by the man at the plate for it.

Concentrate on the hitter.

The pitcher settled himself and opened the next batter with a slider.

Thump.

“Strike!”

Maybe it was having a chance in front of him, but Brandon, the Quakes’ number two hitter, swung big and came up empty.

Instead of regretting it, Suho went back over the pitch that had just been thrown.

So they’re writing the runner off. That’s the plan?

Because there hadn’t even been a throw over.

Good call.

If he wanted to keep his composure from slipping any further, concentrating on the man in front of him was a hundred times the better option.

But that doesn’t mean the runner has to stand there and behave.

And a man like that is exactly the one I should be shaking up.

On top of which, they’d laid the mat out and invited him to do it.

Even if it was a trap, there was no particular reason to avoid it.

And above all, this was one out, not two.

A runner on second and a runner on third are separated by heaven and earth.

Get to third and even a sacrifice by the next man ends up connected to a run.

Put simply.

It raises the odds of scoring.

Second pitch.

In the instant the pitcher started his motion.

Suho exploded out toward third.

A fastball this time.

The other side had been conscious of Suho’s legs after all.

And it may well have been a trap.

Get the first pitch with a breaking ball and no throw over.

Show him you’re only paying attention to the hitter, and if he runs, get him.

Not the pitcher. The catcher.

That was it — the pitcher had committed to the fight with the hitter.

But there was one absolute partner a pitcher couldn’t be separated from even if he wanted to be.

And the catcher, at least, had been watching Suho the whole way.

So when Suho broke for third, the corner of the catcher’s mouth shot up.

Got him.

But.

Thump.

The moment the ball buried itself in the mitt.

The corner of the catcher’s mouth came right back down.

H— he’s already that far?

He was more than halfway between second and third.

No — he was close to reaching the bag.

“Damn it!”

The catcher swore and threw with everything he had at the same moment.

But perhaps his heart was ahead of his hands.

And perhaps the runner’s speed was so far outside what he’d expected.

The throw sailed well over the third baseman’s head and started rolling out into the outfield.

Suho came into third on a slide, saw the throw get away, and got up without hurrying, then set off for home at something like a brisk walk.

He had learned many times over on KBO fields that an outfielder could pick that ball up and throw home and still not get him.

And so Suho brought in the team’s second run, and the Quakes went a run in front.

Suho’s RBI and his run got the Quakes’ bats going.

But the other side kept grinding runs across as well.

Bottom of the fifth. The Quakes were ahead by two at 6–4.

Suho led off the inning.

And in that moment.

The opposing manager signaled the umpire for a pitching change.

The dugout stirred.

The fifth wasn’t even over and this was already the third pitcher.

The starter had come apart after giving up the run to Suho, given up four more, and been pulled.

The second pitcher had been holding them scoreless.

And he was taken out the moment Suho stepped in.

Which made the message of this change plain enough.

That black-haired foreigner has to be dealt with.

He has to be shut down before he can run wild.

The feeling that rose in Suho was almost too much, and it left him dizzy for a moment.

Ah…

Because there was no missing it. The other side was afraid of him.

How long has it been? God…

He had to go a long way back to find it.

High school was the last time, at the very least.

Back then everyone had been afraid of him.

They put their best players in to get him out, of course, and every kind of tactic came out on top of that.

Which was probably why the pride that came now was something he hadn’t known in a very long time.

And on top of everything, this wasn’t Korea. This was America.

They’re acknowledging me.

Strictly speaking, Suho had a hand in only two of the Quakes’ six runs.

But that is the mistake of a man who doesn’t understand what the sport actually is.

Baseball is governed by mood and momentum more than any other game.

Suho’s play had been the thing that broke open an offense that had been shut.

Every run that came after it was simply an extension of the one enormous current he had torn open by himself.

So what the other bench was afraid of wasn’t Suho’s two runs.

It was the hope those two runs breathed into the whole of the Quakes.

Which meant this pitching change, too.

Putting Suho on base here wouldn’t mean one more runner.

It came out of the fear that the floodgates were about to open again.

And because Suho understood that part of it as well.

Get your head straight. This isn’t the time to enjoy yourself.

He forced the elation back down.

There was a long way to go.

A hit and a few stolen bases and a run scored didn’t put a man straight onto the next level.

And so the at-bat began.

The pitcher put everything he had into the first pitch, a fastball that looked like it was on fire.

Thump.

The ball buried itself dead center in the catcher’s mitt like a cannonball.

“Strike!”

The speed came up on the scoreboard.

Ninety-eight.

Suho had had no intention of swinging in the first place, because that was the leadoff hitter’s job.

Swing at a new pitcher’s first offering and you tell your teammates nothing.

The men coming to the plate behind you learn nothing about his velocity or his stuff.

Even so, it surprised him.

Calling it fast simply wasn’t enough.

So it isn’t going to be easy around here after all.

And no wonder. The two pitchers before this one had thrown 90.

This man had just thrown a ball eight miles an hour faster than either of them.

Eight miles an hour, as it feels from the batter’s box, was as overwhelming as the difference between a car doing 125 and a bullet train doing 185.

And it’s the hitter who feels it most.

A 90-mile-an-hour ball can be seen and hit.

For the Suho standing here now, at least, it could.

There is time to follow the ball out of the pitcher’s hand with the eyes, let the brain judge the path, and then give the order to swing.

But the 98 just now was another thing entirely.

It was not in the territory of seeing it and hitting it.

Swing after I see it and I’m late every time.

Which made this a fight of prediction and reaction.

Still, I ought to give them something worth seeing.

He wanted to prove he wasn’t half a player who could only hit slow stuff.

So what was he supposed to do?

Use the whole body and put the bat on it, the same as the last at-bat.

The one problem was that the ball was too fast to see and hit, which left exactly one method.

Win the battle of moves.

Suho was privately startled.

His head had suddenly started working beautifully.

In the old days, the bad days, his head hadn’t worked at all.

Which was why mistakes had come out of him even in situations that favored him.

But now that he was up on his feet with all of that behind him, his confidence was ready to burst.

He’ll drive a fastball in on the second pitch too.

Use the difference in velocity to get to two strikes fast.

Then get the strikeout with a chase pitch against a hitter who’s started to panic.

So.

I hunt this one.

It was a far better method than hunting breaking balls that all moved differently.

Timing… the ball’s fast, so the moment I’m sure it’s a fastball, go.

Second pitch.

The pitcher, confident as expected, put everything behind another fastball.

Ninety-eight miles an hour bored in on Suho’s hands!

There it is!

The instant Suho saw through the red line of the fastball, he swung like a man who’d been waiting for it.

He set off the flow of force he had built with an axe, exactly as it was.

Crack!

Solid contact again.

But it wasn’t a ball that carried the way a home run or a double does.

He had caught the top half of it precisely, and it went out low and fast along the ground.

Even so, the speed on the thing was insane again.

The pitcher’s enormous 98 miles an hour met Suho’s perfect mechanics.

And the energy came back off the bat multiplied several times over.

Zzzip!

The second baseman got low, determined to react to it this time.

But before he could even think about throwing himself at it, the ball was already ten feet past the left side of his glove and rolling out toward the right fielder.

The right fielder started a beat late himself, the ball being so low and so fast.

He got it stopped only by throwing himself at it, a diving stop out in front of him.

Suho reached first with room to spare.

It was only a single.

But Suho clenched his fist like a man with nothing to regret at all.

He had caught it flat. He had produced a ball with force on it.

For now, that alone was enough.

Suho Oh. You really have grown.

And the Quakes, riding that, didn’t miss the other side reeling.

They laid into them all over again.

Final score, 12–4.

Suho had a hand in only three runs.

But everyone who watched that game knew it.

Every one of the twelve runs the Quakes scored had started in Suho’s hands.

Which made Suho the game changer that night, whatever anyone wanted to say about it.

End of Chapter 26