It was the day of game one of the championship series.
The lights came on in the broadcast booth at San Jose Stadium, and play-by-play man John Miller and color man Bill Heywood took their mics.
—It’s finally here, folks, game one of the California League championship series! I’m John Miller, coming to you from the home of the North Division champion San Jose Giants.
—Good evening, everybody. Bill Heywood with you on the analysis. The last stage of the season at last—the final chapter.
—The championship series is best of three. Bill, how do you see tonight’s game?
Bill chuckled.
—I think the Quakes win this one. And not because I’m a homer.
—Oh? You’re calling another upset, after the division series? San Jose is a really strong club. What makes you say that?
—Ha ha. I’m not supposed to say this on the air, but we got a taste of the magic ourselves yesterday, didn’t we?
—Ah! We sure did. I was amazed myself—six hours on the road, and all that fatigue just vanished. And I’ve got a feeling the aftereffects of that magic are going to show up tonight.
—Which brings me to Suho. I think it’s fair to start calling this kid the Magician. What do you think?
—I agree. He’ll pick up other nicknames down the road, but for now, the Magician fits him best.
The Magician. It wasn’t a realistic nickname, and that made it all the better. A nickname like that meant a player’s influence had already gone past anything data or analysis could measure.
—First, let’s check the starting lineup for the visiting Quakes.
- Suho Oh, CF
- Cash Meyer, SS
- Luis Garcia, 2B
- Mark Williams, 1B
- Alexander A. Jackson, DH
- Miguel Sanchez, C
- Carlos Rodriguez, 3B
- Derek Wilson, LF
- Anthony Rizzo, RF
P. Ryan Pepiot
—And now the lineup for the home side, the Giants.
- Kyle Harrison, CF
- Marco Luciano, SS
- Grant McCray, RF
- Victor Ramos, 1B
- Luis Matos, LF
- Adrian Sugastey, 3B
- P.J. Higgins, 2B
- Andy Rodriguez, C
- Roman Murphy, DH
P. Mason White
—Both teams are going with their best lineups. Nobody’s backing down.
—That’s for sure. It’s the last series, so there’s nowhere left to back up to. It should be a fierce one. Let’s go find out the rest on the field.
On the mound stood the pitcher, Mason White.
A right-hander, he’d joined the San Francisco Giants a year earlier as the third overall pick in the first round, a blue-chip prospect.
A third pick in the first round was no ordinary prospect. He was the future of the franchise itself, the kind of player a club poured a multimillion-dollar signing bonus into without a second thought. Going that high was proof he was a monster, standing at the very top of the thousands of players who supposedly had a gift for baseball.
And he’d lived up to it. In less than a year since signing, he’d skipped Rookie ball and conquered Low-A on top of it. He was the real ace, rated even higher than Zack Cozart from the division series, whose promotion to a higher level next season was already locked in.
Done with his warm-up pitches, Mason touched the bill of his cap and glared at Suho as he walked up to the plate.
That’s the guy who makes that team go.
Mason sized up the other side coldly.
Sure, the most famous name on the Quakes was Cash Meyer, their first-rounder at shortstop. And if he widened the view a little—
There’s Mark Williams, too, the number-four hitter who’s still hanging on to some of his old reputation.
But out of all of them, Mason saw Suho as the key.
The reason was simple: the data said so. The Quakes had become a completely different team starting in August, and that lined up exactly with when Suho and Mark Williams joined. The division series had driven the point home, and not because of the numbers—5-for-9 with a home run.
That Korean knows how to turn a game.
Anyone who analyzed baseball even a little deeply knew it. You’d have to be an idiot to miss it. Suho was clearly playing a kind of baseball far removed from anything America knew.
And all of it’s working.
So Suho had to be shut down from his very first at-bat.
On top of that, the situation was overwhelmingly in Mason’s favor. The Quakes had spent six miserable hours on a bus yesterday. There was no way they were in normal shape right now.
Still, no letting up.
That Korean was fast, and his exit velocity was great. His body might feel like lead right now, too heavy to show everything he had. But a guy like that would dig into even the smallest crack you showed him.
I’ve got to stay locked in all the way today.
Meanwhile, standing in the box, Suho had picked up that something was off too. He’d spent his whole life living off reading the room, so this much was easy to figure out.
This one’s really not going to be easy.
The other team’s eyes were blazing. That was hunger, plain and simple—they wanted to win.
But our guys…
They weren’t burning with anything like the same drive. Sure, cooking together yesterday had brought them closer. You could even say it had bonded them. But it hadn’t pushed their will to win all the way to a hundred percent.
Because… it came too late.
If they’d gotten together like that a little sooner, maybe. But people don’t change overnight.
That’s okay, though. We dodged the worst, didn’t we?
Things had been headed for the worst, and Suho had forced a stop to it himself. Better still, the mood on the team was good.
If the game goes our way even a little, everybody’s going to be fired up.
And who was he, anyway? The Quakes’ leadoff hitter. Their spearhead. Where he planted the flag in his hand, deep in enemy territory, would decide which way the momentum swung.
Suho dug in and set his stance.
Come on.
First pitch.
The ball left the pitcher’s fingertips at 98 miles an hour. It roared in and caught the outside corner of the strike zone at the knees. Suho didn’t even think about offering at it.
“Strike!”
Suho’s face hardened. The velocity was about the same as Zack Cozart’s in the division series, but—
The heaviness is on a whole other level.
There was a reason he’d gone that high in the first round.
Second pitch.
The ball left the pitcher’s hand. It looked a lot like the path the 98-mile-an-hour fastball had taken—until, just in front of the plate, it unbelievably lost speed and sank. An 88-mile-an-hour changeup.
“…!”
Suho had started his swing on fastball timing, and he missed it badly.
“Strike two!”
Just like that, it was 0-2.
Groans went up in the Quakes dugout. It was about as dominant as pitching got. The pitcher was toying with their spearhead, of all people, like he was handling a little kid.
White could breathe easier now.
Third pitch.
This time a 99-mile-an-hour fastball came in high on purpose, a chase pitch. An overeager hitter would have swung right through it. But Suho was calmer than anyone. He read it as high and didn’t twitch.
“Ball!”
The count was 1-2.
White wasn’t the least bit rattled. That one had been a waste pitch all along. The real duel started now.
Fourth pitch.
A changeup, tailing away—fading off the plate as it dropped. The kind of out pitch that’s a nightmare for a left-handed hitter.
Suho’s shoulders flinched. Just as he took it for a strike and his bat started forward, it dropped a hair early toward the dirt, and he forced his bat to a stop.
Thump.
“Ball!”
The count was 2-2.
The pitcher frowned, as if to say, He didn’t bite on that?
The truth was, Suho had bitten. It was just that, as the spearhead, he had so much riding on him that he’d put everything he had into undoing the mistake.
And the result was pretty good news—for Suho, that is.
Mason was getting irritated.
Damn. He’s stubborn as hell.
Still, that was fine. At 2-2, a bunt was about the last thing he’d see. A fast runner whose odds on a bunt for a hit were sky-high—that was one strength he could just strike from his mind.
Which left exit velocity.
I just overpower him. Still, no getting careless…
His eyes swept the zone. The inside corner, deep in on the hitter, caught his eye.
If I can just jam one in there, that’s it.
Commanding a fastball wasn’t all that easy. But if he pushed his focus as high as it would go, it wasn’t impossible, either.
It wasn’t exactly a good approach, to be honest. A starting pitcher—the ace of a staff especially—had to get as many pitches out of his arm as he could. Pouring your soul into a single pitch could mean giving up on everything else you were there to do. But however good a prospect he was, he was still a minor leaguer. He wasn’t at the stage yet where he’d have learned to pace himself.
But he had a clear reason to get Suho out: to grab hold of the momentum.
All I need is this guy.
Fifth pitch.
The windup, and the ball was on its way.
In that instant, the pitcher clenched his fist. It was headed exactly where he’d wanted it—in on the hitter’s hands.
Got him.
He had a simple reason to be so sure. An inside power fastball was too late to react to once you saw it. And after he’d shown the changeup twice, the odds that the hitter was sitting on a fastball inside were close to nothing.
And that was true. Suho hadn’t been sure a fastball inside was coming. Quite the opposite. At 2-2 it was still a pitcher’s count, so he’d figured the pitcher would try to get him to chase.
As the fastball came in, Suho narrowed his eyes.
Damn. I lost.
Lost at reading the other man’s move, that is. The pitcher had clearly beaten him there.
But—
Losing that doesn’t mean I can’t still get a hit.
His bat came through with a rush of air, a swing powerful and fast enough to split heaven and earth.
There was a deafening crack, and in its echo, pieces of wood went flying through the air. It was less like a swing than an explosion. Tiny splinters sprayed everywhere like rain.
The bat hadn’t stood up to his stuff and had shattered. An inside fastball has to be handled faster than one down the middle or away, and Suho had been late.
But he didn’t hesitate. He took off for first.
He ran even though the ball hadn’t carried at all—even though it was trickling toward the pitcher like a bunt.
And Suho had it right.
The pitcher couldn’t react right away. Part of the reason was the wood fragments scattering everywhere and blocking his view. He could make out the white ball through them, faintly, but his feet just wouldn’t move.
He was in shock. He’d been certain of a strikeout, and the hitter had gotten the bat on it. And the bat speed he’d shown was frightening. The two shocks had lodged in his head and tied his body in knots.
“What are you doing? Get it!”
The catcher’s shout snapped the pitcher out of it, and he came off the mound and fielded the ball. His reaction was a little late, but ordinarily there was still plenty of time to get the runner at first.
But—
Thump.
The throw was right on the money. The umpire spread both arms wide anyway. Suho’s foot had gotten there a little sooner.
“Safe! Safe!”
Walking back to the bag he’d run past, Suho clenched his fist.
Thank God.
He’d been completely jammed; Suho admitted it himself. But so what? By rights he should have lost that one, and he’d won.
Glad I didn’t give up.
That was the thing. Suho had no interest in giving up—not on a line drive hit right at a fielder, not on an ordinary ground ball with nothing on it, not on a weak infield pop-up, and not on a completely dead ball like this one.
An ordinary hitter decides a ball like that is an out and gives up early.
Because you could get hurt.
Running hard on a dead ball got you nothing, and if you went all out and got hurt, you’d only be worse off.
But Suho, at least, didn’t want to give up on any ball he hit. To him, giving up meant failing.
I never want to fail again.
And that was why it had turned out this well.
He raised a fist toward his dugout, and the players let out a roar all at once.
“Whoooooa!”
Because the Quakes’ magician—their very own—was working his magic again, same as always.
End of Chapter 36