"This is bad. Things are getting tense—it's turned into a pitchers' duel."
Both teams' batting lineups had been completely suppressed by the opposing pitchers. At this point, all that remained to watch was the performance of the two pitchers.
The game had reached the fifth inning, and the combined strikeout count had already reached ten.
"This game is going to run long." Many spectators came to the same conclusion, and the tense atmosphere intensified as the two pitchers continued their tug-of-war.
"But they're high schoolers. They could collapse at any time." Quite a few games that had been exciting at first would, once the players hit their physical limits, turn into...
"Ah, this could even go into extra innings, right?"
"But there hasn't been a single hit in the entire game. Isn't that a little ridiculous?"
"Seido's ace isn't in bad form at all. He was the one who lost to Hongo last year, wasn't he?"
All kinds of discussions rose up around the stands. As long as today's game was shocking enough, any outcome was possible.
But the players actually on the field had no mind to guess what would happen next. They had only one thing in their eyes: "Don't rush. Find a gap in the defense first, and get a hit!"
Kyoma University's fifth batter nodded cautiously.
This was already the fifth inning. The game had passed the halfway point, yet Seido's pitcher still showed no sign of being broken through.
Both pitchers topped out at 150, and Kyoma University had faced Hongo's pitches many times. By all rights, they should have adapted to Seido's ace after one trip through the lineup, but no one expected that to happen.
"Watch out for that catcher," the cleanup hitter warned him.
Clean and precise—those were the most distinctive traits