By the time Suho and Mark got back to the motel parking lot, the sun was long down and the dark had settled in.

The players, worn out and hungry, saw the headlights and started sticking their heads out of their rooms one at a time.

Suho and Mark hauled three enormous styrofoam boxes out of the van, grunting, steam still coming off them.

The players came running out all at once.

“What is all that?”

“That smell is unreal.”

They crowded around the boxes like men under a spell.

Suho opened the lid of one of them.

“…!”

Enormous Dungeness crabs, cooked red and steaming, sat inside.

The sight of them wiped out six hours on the road in one stroke.

“Whoa. No way. He actually pulled it off?”

“This really cost ten dollars? That makes no sense.”

Mark’s brows drew together, but his voice was full of pride.

“What do you mean, no sense? They’re right here, aren’t they? So get yourselves ready to eat.”

The players cheered and every one of them reached for the boxes.

Suho put an arm out and stopped them.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You’re going to eat them like that?”

“Seems like they’d be good like that…”

Steaming them or boiling them is what Americans do with them too.

But who were these men?

Minor leaguers — professional athletes, in other words.

“One steamed crab isn’t going to fill any of you up.”

The players shut their mouths.

He was right.

They looked delicious, but was one crab a lot of food?

It wasn’t. If anything it looked like less food than a burger.

And just as every pair of eyes there started to fill with disappointment, Suho put the answer in front of them.

“But cook them and there’s a lot more to go around.”

“Cook them? How?”

There are in fact all kinds of ways to cook them in San Francisco.

There’s a stew they make out of them called cioppino.

You can fry them up with noodles and garlic, or with rice.

You can make a clam chowder to dip bread in, or put them in a sandwich or a salad.

Maybe each of them was picturing whichever dish looked best to him, because the players started to drool.

But one of them came to his senses and asked.

“I get that it’d taste way better that way and there’d be more of it. But listen… who’s making it? Are you making it, Suho?”

Suho shook his head.

“No. We’re making it.”

“We— we? I don’t know how to cook!”

That set it off, and every one of them put in a word about not knowing how to cook either.

Suho smiled anyway.

“It’s fine. The ingredients are great, aren’t they? Even if we wreck it, it’ll taste good. And these days you can find a recipe just by looking it up online. It’s really easy. You all cook for yourselves sometimes.”

The players looked at the ground.

Cooking for themselves was true enough.

But mostly it was bread in a toaster, or something frozen.

“You can’t fry an egg?”

“I can do that much.”

“It’s as easy as that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Trust me. Honestly, there’s nothing to trust. All you have to do is watch and copy.”

Suho went on.

“And if we pull the cooking off tonight, it’s going to help your food costs a lot from here on.”

Cooking, of all things. The thing everybody says is hard, and they pull it off?

Confidence would come with it.

And once it did, a man naturally starts trying other dishes.

American grocery prices are cheap, in particular.

A man who can cook for himself can cut his food costs way down.

Suho hadn’t been living in America long.

But this much a man picks up after even a short time there, and he had it in mind too.

“Shall we try it?”

“It— it does sound fun…”

While the players were still making up their minds.

Suho and Mark went back to the van and got the rest of the load out.

Baguettes, vegetables, sauces — everything he’d bought with the money left over from the crabs.

They unloaded every bit of it.

Then they went to the kitchen with the motel owner and came out with an enormous pot and frying pans.

Every tool the job required.

“The tools and the ingredients are right here. All we have to do is put things in.”

Suho had arranged to borrow the equipment from the motel owner on the drive back.

Since they’d agreed to share the food, that came free too.

To say it again: these men are ballplayers.

With the stage set this well, they were going to give up?

It would be like bunting with a runner already in scoring position.

Would a bunt even occur to any of these men, Suho aside?

Absolutely not.

They’d play the hero instead. They’d be going for the big one, no question about it.

“All right. I’m in!”

“Obviously we’re doing it.”

Every one of them was in.

This was food being made by men who had done nothing in their lives but play baseball.

Naturally it didn’t go the way they wanted.

Things went wrong everywhere.

Ingredients going in in a strange order.

Nobody able to control the heat.

Noodles not cooked through, and so on.

But none of it bothered them.

It was the first time any of them had tried it.

Once they decided it was something like the Boy Scouts they’d been in as kids, it was just fun.

And these men were professionals on top of that.

They lived hemmed in by baseball.

And being a minor leaguer was one long stretch of insecurity.

The monsters were everywhere.

And the road to the majors was narrow. Far too narrow.

So they lived under it all the time, and here, thanks to Suho, was something nobody had seen coming.

While the cooking was well under way, Taylor called Suho aside.

“Suho. Come here a minute.”

Suho trotted over and stood in front of him.

“You wanted me, sir?”

“I did. First of all, I want to say thank you.”

Taylor let his eyes travel over the whole scene.

Every one of them looked to be of one mind.

Every face in the place was in full bloom.

“It really does feel like one team.”

“Ah, not yet, sir. What matters is the result, right?”

“Not— not yet?”

Taylor was thrown.

The result mattered most, as Suho said. That was true.

However well a team pulls together, what good is any of it if they lose the game?

But this was the minor leagues. This was where players grow.

The result matters, but so does the process.

Suho had pulled this team together by some method other than baseball, and there was no arguing with it.

That on its own deserved applause, and here he was saying it wasn’t enough.

While Taylor was still working on it, Suho smiled and nailed it shut.

“Because the process was good. So we have to prove it with the result even more.”

“…”

“If the process is good and the result is bad, all these good things that happened today just end up as a memory a bunch of losers have. I don’t want that. The process was excellent, so the result has to be more perfect than that.”

Taylor was honestly full of admiration.

This really is remarkable.

Taylor had been in this job for decades, and it was a method he had never seen before either.

However individualist America is, the team was coming together as one, so Suho was doing well.

And here he was doing what nobody else had managed, and calling it not yet.

It made no sense to him at all.

“I’m happy about the process too, obviously. The process matters in the end. But it’s icing on the cake if the result is good as well, isn’t it? I’m going to do everything I can for the result too.”

Taylor laughed under his breath.

It was a smile that came from relief.

He had thought he was washed up.

There were times he’d been ashamed of still holding on to a manager’s job.

Because he hadn’t managed to do the thing he set out to do.

But…

He wasn’t.

I thought this one was different from the other players.

His eye hadn’t been wrong, at least.

If anything it had been exactly right.

So how could he not be happy about it?

More successful than any manager in the minor leagues, at least.

No. Maybe more successful than a major league manager.

On a stage where the result is everything, of course.

A minor league manager, and a Low-A one at that, can’t be called a successful life.

But whatever anybody else said.

He himself, at least, was feeling proud.

Still, a man couldn’t get sentimental on a good day like this one.

Taylor decided to change the mood immediately.

“Not too tired?”

“Not at all. It’s a lot of fun. This is my first time in America, so if I go at it like I’m here on a trip, it’s actually better.”

Suho genuinely wasn’t tired.

Wasn’t this a man who started his conditioning work at five every morning?

He had more confidence in his stamina than anybody.

And Suho puts himself first as well.

He had no intention of doing anything that would interfere with the way he played.

But from where Taylor stood, nothing could have been more positive.

Because he knew perfectly well how hard it is to run around for a team right after six hours on a bus.

“That said, the crab looked incredible… honestly, I’m a little afraid of how the cooking turns out.”

“Ah, it’s fine. It’ll taste good.”

“How— how are you so sure?”

“Well…”

Suho held up the red containers he had in both hands.

MSG, the seasoning he’d mostly used back in Korea.

“With this, any food tastes good. All right, I’ll go finish the cooking.”

Taylor smiled, pleased.

Suho turned his back on him and went off to the battlefield.

“Agh! Why does it taste like this!”

“No! I ruined this beautiful crab…”

Suho tasted his way around the place, throwing in whatever was missing and whatever seasoning it took to fix it.

And then the food was done.

The manager and the coaching staff.

The bus driver and the motel owner were served first, and after that it was the players’ turn.

But not one of them was willing to come and be served.

Because it hadn’t tasted good when they’d tried it.

And right at that moment.

Somebody stepped up to take it on the chin.

It was Cash.

“Give me some.”

Suho piled a variety of the crab dishes onto the plate Cash held out.

Then he ladled the soup into a paper cup for him.

“Come back for more if it isn’t enough.”

Cash stood there and smelled the food, and then his eyes flashed.

Then he took a small sip of the clam chowder.

“…It’s good.”

Those words were the starting gun.

Every one of them started getting in line to be served, disbelief all over their faces.

And no wonder.

The man who had said it was good was Cash, of all people.

A man who lived in his own world.

A man who didn’t tell so much as a speck of a lie had said it was good.

For these men that carried more weight than a head chef at a three-star Michelin restaurant.

And the players who got their food and tasted it started shouting that they couldn’t believe it either.

“Why— why is it good?”

“It didn’t taste like this before!”

“Damn it. Our magician did another magic trick! This is so good!”

“I’m glad we didn’t eat burgers! I’m glad we didn’t eat burgers!”

Suho looked thoroughly pleased with himself.

“There’s plenty of food. From here on help yourselves if you want more.”

Then he filled a plate, and he and Mark went off to sit in a corner.

Mark got one mouthful in and his eyes started to fill.

“Wow. This is unbelievable. This is really good.”

“Mark. We made this.”

“That’s why it tastes better, I think. However I look at it, you really are something.”

“I keep telling you it was us, not me.”

“Us… right. Thank you for putting it that way. Really.”

Mark meant it.

And who in America had known Suho longer than he had?

Nobody. He’d known him longest.

And this man, Suho…

He’s something. He’s just something.

And no wonder, because a major leaguer is an example to everybody.

Even people who never dreamed of being ballplayers want to be like them.

And it can’t be otherwise, because they’re men who came through endless competition to take one of those places.

Only, nobody feels anything like that about a minor leaguer.

But Suho…

He had failed in Korea.

He’d have had every right to be discouraged, and there wasn’t a trace of it anywhere on him.

If anything he worked harder than anybody.

And on top of it he was doing everything he could for the team.

Inside the games.

And outside them like this.

I want to be like him.

Mark meant it.

Suho is going to make it all the way to the top.

Mark didn’t especially think his own eye was accurate.

He’d only been alive twenty years, so if anything it was short of good rather than outstanding.

But there’s such a thing as beginner’s luck, isn’t there?

Sometimes a beginner’s prediction lands better than an expert’s.

But how far can a ballplayer get leaning on beginner’s luck?

A man has to trust his own two eyes to climb any higher.

And Mark had seen it.

Suho is pulling minor leaguers together.

He had done what nobody else had managed to do.

He was unmistakably a player in a different class.

And it’s always this kind who ends up at the top.

End of Chapter 35