The First Day of Practice

"So you became their coach? Training starts tomorrow? ⊙_⊙!"

"But what about me? You can't just abandon me like this!"

"Say something!"

After finalizing the Baseball Club's plans, Sendou was bombarded with questions by his childhood friend that very evening.

But Sendou was not in the mood to talk right now.

"Is it sunny in Tokyo right now? Then the stars outside must be beautiful! It's almost summer, after all." Yet Sendou's smirk was nowhere near as serious as his words.

"Yeah, it's sunny! (Smile)"

And then? There was no then.

"Stare..."

"Looks like that settled it. What a troublesome girl." After a few minutes without any new messages, Sendou left that line and tossed his phone aside.

"I'm kind of sleepy, but I don't want to sleep at all! My precious vacation is ending just like that! And my Going-Home Club life... damn it!"

After tossing and turning for a while, Sendou finally drifted off to sleep. He had completely forgotten something.

"Stare...!"

"Oh no, it's already this late! I need to shower and go to bed!" She hurriedly got up and began bustling around.

Well, that Natural Airhead had completely forgotten something too, and she had not noticed anything strange at all.

"Come to think of it, our school really doesn't have many clubs. There's hardly anyone around after school, and the Baseball Club doesn't even have any upperclassmen. Oh, right, you were the one who founded the Baseball Club, weren't you, Eijun?"

"Yep~, that's right!" Sawamura replied in his usual exaggeratedly solemn tone. It was obvious just how happy he was that Sendou had joined the Baseball Club.

"And Teacher Sano must have had a hard time dealing with you too, right?" Sendou said, looking at the dozens of balls in the box.

"Huh?"

"Haha, exactly! Little Sano was always being pestered by Little Eijun! Stuff like, 'Take us to play a Practice Match, and if we win, you have to treat us to barbecue.' In the end, even though they lost, he still treated them to barbecue. Then there was the club funding and all that. A lot of the Baseball Club's stuff was bought by Little Sano out of his own pocket!" Ono said with a laugh. The others laughed too, while Sawamura looked a little embarrassed.

"That's pretty good, isn't it?"

"Huh?" Everyone looked at Sendou in confusion.

"This Baseball Club needs shameless people like you. Hahaha!"

"You bastard, Sendou!" The others immediately grabbed Sawamura.

"All right, joking time is over. Fielders, get to your defensive positions. Shin, put on the gear."

"Yeah!" Takeda Shin answered.

They began moving into position.

"What about me?" Sawamura asked, pointing at himself.

"Oh, if you've got nothing to do, go run laps! Just make sure you don't get hit by a ball!"

"Huh?"

"Hmm?"

"N-No, it's nothing. I'll go run right away." Sawamura immediately fled to run laps around the field.

One good thing about a rural school is that there's no shortage of field space, Sendou thought to himself.

"I'm going to keep hitting them at you, so prepare yourselves!" he shouted to the entire field.

"Yeah!!!" everyone shouted back.

"First, the third baseman!"

"Ping!" Like Coach Nakanishi had back then, Sendou hit a slow grounder.

The third baseman caught it easily and threw it to the first baseman.

However, the throw went wide...

"Another one, third baseman!!!"

"Ping!"

However, he missed it...

"..."

The atmosphere became extremely awkward for a moment.

Sendou covered his face with his right hand.

"Forget it. Defensive positions are canceled. All of you, line up here!" After falling silent for a while, Sendou pointed at the third baseman's normal defensive position.

"Wakaba, take a glove and receive the throws at first base."

"Okay." Wakaba answered and ran toward first base.

"You bunch of idiots, what have you been playing at all these years? This was the practice content from my first day in Little League, and the ball speed was the same. You're worse than I was when I was nine. No, you're even worse than the classmates who were worse than me when I was nine. My bat barely even touched the ball just now. There was no speed on it at all, and you still let it get past you. And can't you even play catch properly? What have you all been doing normally?" Sendou groaned weakly.

"Sorry, Sen-chan!"

"No, maybe those were just mistakes. But those basic mistakes are why every out you should have gotten turns into a hit. Like I said yesterday, our first step is to get every single out that we should be getting. Do you understand?!!!"

Sendou had spoken clearly and methodically at first, but he suddenly raised his voice for the last sentence.

"Yes!!!"

"Then there's only one way to eliminate those mistakes: constant practice. Make sure you catch every one of them. Then I'll increase the speed until you can do this in an actual game. Let's start. Another one!"

"Ping!"

After that, the group proved just how bad they really were.

Although Sendou realized something, he had no intention of stopping.

As their batting coach, Sendou was not like Coach Kataoka in the original story, who hit every ball with full force. He was really just lightly tapping the ball with his bat, like a bunt with a little extra force.

Yet it was normal for this bunch to miss catches, and their throws were wild too.

But as time went on, Sendou said midway through.

"Prioritize success rate. It doesn't matter if the throw is slower. Let your body remember the feeling of applying that force first."

After hearing that, there were finally far fewer wild throws to first base after catching the ball.

Half an hour later, once Sendou saw that their catches had started to stabilize, he increased the speed a little. But only a little. He was not going to accelerate continuously and make each ball vastly faster, like Coach Nakanishi had when testing him that day.

Sawamura ran silently around the Sports Field, glancing at them resentfully as he ran...

However, he had already been forgotten.

The only true idiot on this team was him. Though what Sendou asked them to do was simple, they all understood that Sendou's reasoning was correct.

No one slacked off anymore. Although many of them had joined the Baseball Club because of Sawamura, it was also because of Sawamura that they had come to understand the fun of baseball.

They had never watched games before, and some did not even know the rules. This was their first time receiving proper instruction. Though it was monotonous and boring, they were all enjoying it.

I started writing today, and I kept feeling like something was missing from the training scenes, like they were a little off. So I watched a few more episodes of the anime and specifically found the Autumn Tournament part with Wanggu, as well as a few amateur team training scenes from the Bad Boy Army that Umemiya belonged to. I watched a bit of those, hoping to find some inspiration. By the way, what was the Bad Boy Army's team called again? I don't think I know how to spell it. Can someone tell me the pinyin? Also, please vote with recommendation tickets. Starting today, there seems to be some kind of anime-related recommendation thing, but I don't really understand it either, so I'm counting on everyone.