grand slam | seokhan

11 || Killing Two Birds with One Baseball

The first inning was exactly what Jihoon expected it to be, but worse. He determined that when he realized that not only his outfielders seemed to be having an off day, but his pitcher was too.

Joshua and Ren were doing the best they could with receiving and passing the baseballs being batted towards them. Joshua was slightly better than the blue haired right outfielder, having actually caught more hits than Ren had (Jihoon knew this because Jun wouldn’t stop cheering every time Joshua did something impressive), but the two definitely needed to work on their technique more. 

Jihoon wasn’t surprised to see that Eunwoo wasn’t doing well; the middle outfielder had been overly nervous and seemed like he was going to fall apart at the seams before the match started. It was only expected to see him act the same way, if not more, when the game did start.

Eunwoo was more experienced than Joshua or Ren, because he knew the basics of baseball (since he was a big fan of the sport) while the two seniors knew little to nothing about the rules of the game. However, Eunwoo didn’t perform as well as the two did, as he fumbled every ball that came his way and dropped every catch he tried to execute. The short captain made a mental note to work on Eunwoo’s apparent fear of performance after their game was over. 

Jihoon saw no need to work about his three basemen because Chan, Baekho, and Mingyu were polished in playing their positions after years of being on the team. Minhyun, the shortstop, was never someone Jihoon had to worry about. The short captain knew that Minhyun would take care of himself. Even if the shortstop made mistakes during the game, he was quick to adapt and fix them during the game so that he wouldn’t make the same error twice.

What caught Jihoon off-guard though was his pitcher, Seokmin. He didn’t think that the tall brunet had to be worried about since he already knew how to play and because he was pretty darn good at pitching. That proved to not be the case though, because Seokmin seemed distracted.

His eyes always trailed off to the bleachers, as if he was looking for someone. As a result, the brunet’s pitches were a bit off. Jihoon actually found it difficult, as the catcher of the team, to receive any of Seokmin’s pitches because of how stray they were. It was because of the pitcher and his clouded mind that the Starship team was able to walk multiple bases, scoring at least five points before they struck themselves out. 

It was when they switched from defense to offense that Jihoon discovered yet another problem, one that this time was to blame on him. The short captain realized quickly that they also had to work on their offense, because their batting wasn’t at all at the same skill level as Soonyoung’s team was.

Anyone could learn to catch and pass a ball across the field, but learning proper batting techniques took time, time that Jihoon didn’t really utilize during their practices. It didn’t stun him at all to see Eunwoo strike out all three times against the Starship pitcher, Hyunwoo, because the tall junior hadn’t done so well at playing the outfield either. 

There was still hope though, because Jihoon had faith in his good hitters. Baekho, Mingyu, and Minhyun were there to make up for the recruits and their poor batting skills, scoring a total of three points for the team before they were forced to switch again from batting to playing defense on the field.

The second inning came and went in a flash of light, with the Starship team only scoring two more points to add onto their existing score of five as Joshua and Ren grew more accustomed to their roles as the left and right outfielders. It was what Jihoon hoped for, for the recruits to learn first-hand how vital their positions were rather than just having them run countless drills during their after school practices. 

The third inning was the Pledis High team’s last chance to really score, and with the Starship being ahead of them by four points Jihoon still remained confident that his team would at least close the gap between the score differences.