Watching Miyuki's Match

Watching Miyuki's Game

As the final adjustment period before the tournament, the entire team's focus was poured into the regulars. During the two weeks when other teams were playing matches, part of the Kinoshita Little League squad roamed various game venues with cameras to scout, while the other part assisted the coaches daily in special training for the regulars.

However, as important reserve strength for next year, second-string pitchers like Kōshū still followed their original plans for strength training, while Hayakawa Aki and others were called in to make final corrections to the first-string pitchers' throws.

According to Hayakawa Aki, although no further experiments were conducted on Kōshū, the coaching staff verified the effect of the rotation axis through multiple channels—such as consulting university coaches on the mechanics of the entire pitching motion. With the final analysis in hand, they corrected the pitching motions of Senior Heishi and Senior Nozawa within half a month.

Because Senior Heishi was already 1.85 meters tall, and despite multiple motion corrections, some habits formed earlier still lingered. After frame-by-frame analysis by the coaching staff, they found that his shoulder opened too wide, and the glove-side flank wasn't pressed down, causing his shoulder to tilt slightly toward horizontal rotation. As a result, his shoulder was exposed to the batter too early.

After the correction, the flank drove the glove-side shoulder downward, giving the pitching-side shoulder room for vertical rotation. The moment it appeared before the batter was delayed, and because the pitching shoulder's outward movement was reduced, the throwing arm stayed closer to the body, making the pitch easier to control and more accurate.

Finally, the focus of the adjustment: currently, Heishi's weapons are the fastball and the curveball. From the batter's perspective, both show four seams. Now that Heishi's fastball rotation axis has been corrected to be truer, there's a strong possibility that batters might distinguish between fastball and curveball based solely on the feel of the spin.

Although everyone trusted the coaches' explanation, such sharp batters probably wouldn't appear until professional baseball. Even if high school players could tell the difference, they might not be able to hit it.

To make the teammates more convinced, Coach Fujii chose Captain Ito, who had one of the best ball senses, as the batter. After facing Heishi many times in actual games, Captain Ito commented, "The fastball is harder to hit than before, but the difference in spin between the fastball and curveball in the early phase is also more noticeable."

To address this issue, Heishi needed to adjust his curveball's rotation axis over the final two weeks to align as closely as possible with the fastball's axis.

"A fastball with high spin creates a better illusion of rising, while a curveball drops. If we can align the rotation axes of these two pitches—meaning in the early phase, both look like four-seam rotation to the batter, but they're actually completely different, one spinning upward on four seams and the other downward—the batter will always be guessing. That's very advantageous for us." Coach Fujii's face lit up with a smile. "Middle school batters can't handle this at all."

Although Kōshū was happy for Senior Heishi, watching a bunch of adults spend all day figuring out how to deal with middle schoolers was a bit hard to describe. 'How should I put it? These adults are pretty passionate too.'

As for Nozawa, his overall adjustments were complete. As the team's ace, he had become much more serious. He used to come over to the training room to bother Kōshū and Shibasaki, but now he was almost entirely focused on training and rest.

"The atmosphere in the team is really different," Kōshū remarked.

Shibasaki nodded in agreement. Most of the third-year middle school students on the team would continue playing baseball in high school, but this was still their last year at Kinoshita Little League. Most of them had been learning under Coach Ninomiya since elementary school. Now, the elementary school members of the Kinoshita Club trained in the indoor field, with much shorter training hours than the middle school members. Many would come to the outdoor field to watch the older players practice while waiting for their parents.

'Those third-years must have gone through the same thing—elementary and middle school on this familiar field, watching generation after generation of seniors sweat it out. Now that they're about to leave, they must feel reluctant.'

In this atmosphere, Kōshū gradually understood the important role baseball played in a young person's growth in Japan. Of course, this shift in mindset was also because Coach Ninomiya had made him serve as a scorekeeper for several games. Coach Ninomiya understood that for someone who hadn't grown up in a baseball culture, it was hard to grasp the sport's significance to young people. So over these two weeks, he had Hayakawa Aki take Kōshū to record several games.

When Kōshū watched the defeated teams leave in disappointment, the weight of winning and losing in baseball grew heavier in his heart. At the same time, because he was investing more focus into baseball, he had gradually given up on finding a close friend at school.

During basketball class, he made a few shots and was approached by a small group of boys. They slowly got familiar, but every day after school, Kōshū had to go to the Little League team, and after that, he was stuck with Sasaki Rōchi tagging along. He simply couldn't break away to hang out with them. So this friendship, barely started, ended with Kōshū's refusal.

As a result, as an energetic young person, Kōshū's life was nothing but studying and baseball. 'This is how so-called baseball idiots are raised.'

So when Kōshū received an email from Miyuki, he actually entertained the thought, 'Maybe I should find friends in the baseball world.' But the moment he opened the email to read it, he immediately crushed that idea. The baseball world was huge—why would he be desperate enough to seek out this guy?

The email read: "Kō-kun, come watch my game tomorrow. We're playing against 'Great Victory Little League.' Since you're not a regular anyway, you've got nothing better to do, so you might as well come see my game."

'What do you mean, "not a regular, so nothing better to do"? I have plenty of training to do.' For a moment, Kōshū felt the urge to type out a sarcastic reply. 'Wait, wasn't I going to delete him? Is he deliberately trying to provoke me into responding?'

Following his memory, he could almost see that catcher who talked on and on beside him and saw through his excuses. Back then, he was half-forced to give out his email, and later, he kept putting off deleting it because of various distractions.

'But it's weird—how does he know I'm not a regular?' And back then, when he was pitching in the garden, Miyuki didn't even know his name. Yet after the game, when Kōshū tried to slip away, Miyuki called him by name.

So, driven by the curiosity of wanting to satisfy himself before deleting, Kōshū replied, "How do you know so much about our team?"

"Secret. If you come watch the game tomorrow, I'll consider telling you."

Damn. He really shouldn't have replied.

Before Kōshū could hit delete, another message came through: "We'd make a great battery. Aren't you called 'Self-Aiming Missile-kun'? If we work together, you can strictly follow my signals and throw exactly where I want. We can take down a lot of batters together."

Alright, the answer was clear. Miyuki Kazuya's mole in Kinoshita Little League was none other than Senior Nozawa. As unreliable as ever. And now he'd added 'Self-Aiming' in front of 'Missile-kun'? Kōshū was at a loss for words.

He snapped his phone shut, planning to confront Senior Nozawa with the evidence after the first game ended.

But Kōshū never expected that he would end up watching Miyuki Kazuya's game after all. Dragged along forcefully. Hayakawa Aki stood at the training room door today, watching Kōshū drag his feet and perform an elaborate pantomime of 'I really don't want to go watch the game today' with every inch of his body, before calmly pulling him along anyway.

"Miyuki Kazuya. Another standout catcher with a strong arm, following last year's 'Tokyo's Number One Iron Catcher,'" Hayakawa Aki explained as usual. The other teammates had grown used to this babysitting scene. Their understanding of the pitcher-catcher relationship had expanded to include 'babysitter.'

"Oh. If his arm's so strong, why doesn't he become a pitcher?" Kōshū nitpicked.

"Look at how fast he throws to second base. It's a shame he didn't play in the last practice game," Hayakawa Aki said, ignoring the jab.

"He didn't play last time. It could've been because he was late."

"This time, we need to collect good data on him. More than his strong arm, what matters is his ability to guide different types of pitchers well." Hayakawa Aki handed over the scorebook, and Kōshū obediently took it.

Even though they were far from the field, Kōshū pulled his cap brim down a bit lower, afraid of being hit with trash talk later like, 'You said you wouldn't come watch my game, but here you are.'

In the first inning, Great Victory Little League attacked first. Miyuki glanced at the leadoff batter, who was gripping the bat shallowly, and without hesitation called for an outside low corner fastball. The opposing pitcher stared expressionlessly at the catcher's signals, gave a slight nod, and hurled the ball toward Miyuki behind home plate.

'Hey, hey, Hasegawa, you're taking out all your frustration on the pitch. If you burn out too early from overexertion, I'll have to ask the coach for a pitching change.' Miyuki's threat came through loud and clear in his forceful return throw.

"Tch." Hasegawa felt the catcher's displeasure and recalled Miyuki's words before the game.

"Hasegawa-kun, this inning I'll mainly use fastballs and cutters. Please seal the other pitches for now."

"What, you still think my slider can't fit in?"

"Do I have to spell it out? Hasegawa-kun's slider isn't sharp enough yet. It can't fool the batters, and it always goes off-target. Better give up on using it in games."

"Hmph, the coach didn't say anything."

"Haha, but during a game, the coach trusts my judgment more."

As expected, I can never work well with this catcher. All he needs is a tool to execute his ideas.

The next pitch, Hasegawa threw a cutter to a similar spot. The batter grounded out.

Signed on, heart singing a nervous tune.

Not sure if I can keep going, not sure if what I write is good enough, not sure if I'll get recognition. For now, I'm holding on with the mindset of 'practicing persistence in one thing.'