Continue Practicing (1)

Finally, it was evening. Since it was almost summer, the days were getting longer, and it wouldn't truly get dark until 6 or 7 PM. However, Sendou wouldn't let them practice that late.

"Alright, that's it for today!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the group all sat down on the ground. Next to them, Sawamura was already lying down with a blank expression.

"Hey!" Sendou chuckled very softly, then raised one corner of his mouth in a somewhat mischievous smile.

"In five minutes, you're running back! Wakaba, you'll supervise them on your bike! And tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM, gather on the main street and run to school together, then run here until class starts. Don't slack off, at least 10 kilometers every morning. Oh, and remember to practice your swings when you get back."

"Well then, good work, I'll head back first."

"You bastard, you jerk!" Sawamura immediately jumped up and shouted when he heard Sendou was leaving.

"What's wrong? I'm just your coach, I never said I'd practice with you! Besides, I have a lot of things to do. So, I'm counting on you for the morning practice starting tomorrow, Wakaba. Well then, sa, you, na, la!"

With that, he left without looking back.

"Didn't Sen-chan say not to swing the bat wildly?" Takada asked.

"But he didn't say we couldn't practice. He must think our batting won't help the team, which means the ban will be lifted when we improve our batting to his satisfaction.

So, Sen-chan just means he won't be training us in swinging for a short time. What he said just now means we have to rely on ourselves. Let's do our best! Baseball is a nine-person sport." Ono replied immediately.

"Oh!!!"

"Ah? Oh!!!"

The last "Oh!!!" was from Sawamura, whose reaction time was extremely slow. He hadn't paid attention to his teammates' conversation at all, he was just blindly following their unison.

"Hahahaha!" Sure enough, the group was amused by him.

"Hahahaha!" But Sawamura didn't know why and laughed along, which instantly cleared away a lot of the day's fatigue.

At this moment, Sendou was truly contemplating several things.

"I'm back!"

"Welcome back, Akila! How was the first day of practice?"

"Worse than I imagined. Those of my classmates on the Wildcats on my first day were much better. But I also discovered some things I hadn't thought of before. I'm going back to my room first, Grandma!"

With that, Sendou went straight upstairs.

That evening, Sendou didn't refuse his childhood friend's request for tutoring, guiding her in her studies while thinking about how to improve the Baseball Club.

To be fair, Sendou wasn't very good at directly solving problems, but he was good at explaining the thought process. Fumino only needed to learn these thought processes to accumulate knowledge, so the two complemented each other quite well.

Today, they continued yesterday's practice.

"Again?"

"That's right, your fielding is still far from good enough. There won't be such gentle balls in a game. Oh, I misspoke. If you make it past the first few rounds, there won't be such gentle balls." Sendou said, then suddenly remembered the scene of the chickens pecking at each other a while ago and quickly corrected himself.

"By the way, I've noticed that your catching stances are all very problematic. Also, gloves, don't use the palm of your hand to catch the ball..."

Before starting, Sendou told them the basic techniques he had thought of and researched, and then they began practicing.

At first, several people were unaccustomed and had to consider the catching position, making frequent mistakes. However, Sendou would not let them off easily. If the catching position was wrong, they had to start all over again. The goal was to let their bodies remember, to make the posture and catching position their instinct. To be honest, Sendou himself didn't do well in these aspects.

However, there were also some outstanding individuals compared to this group of underachievers, namely Ono and Kondo, the original first and second batters.

After adjusting their posture, their catching ability became quite good in just one hour, and the ball speed Sendou hit to them was also very fast. Of course, this was only relative.

"Ono! You come up to bat!"

"Huh?"

"I want to check on that idiot's condition. As for you and Kondo, I haven't figured out how to give you enhanced training yet. I'll think about it when I get back today!"

"Oh, okay!"

"Takeda, lend me your catcher's mitt, and you go catch too!" Saying that, he threw Sawamura's mitt to him.

"Oh!"

Saying that, Sendou casually carried the mitt in one hand and walked towards Sawamura, who was already resting.

"Get up, Eijun!"

"What are you going to do?" Sawamura asked, looking at Sendou warily.

"Come throw a few pitches and let me catch!"

"Oh!" Sawamura obediently stood up.

"Alright, let's start!"

Sawamura raised his leg and swung his arm.

Pa!

Sendou frowned slightly.

"Baka, I didn't ask you to play catch, throw it with all your strength!"

"But!"

"But what?"

"But everyone says..."

"Oh, you mean that, don't worry about it, just throw it with all your strength."

This time, Sawamura's swing was much more thorough. With the full set of methods to increase ball speed that Sendou taught him a few years ago, although the ball speed was not very exaggerated, it was still around 125 to 130 kilometers per hour.

You should know that Sawamura's highest ball speed in his second year of high school was only 138, and his first year was about this speed. Of course, Sendou was unaware of this.

Pa!

Sendou frowned again!

"Hey, I already threw it with all my strength!" Sawamura shouted immediately when he saw him frown, indicating that he was obedient and not to blame.

"This pitch... is it a strike?" Unexpectedly, Sendou frowned and thought for a long time before saying such a sentence.

"Who the hell knows, you're the catcher!" Sawamura shouted from more than 15 meters away, how could he possibly see it?

"I'm weak in this area!" Sendou thought silently.

Of course, he wouldn't expose his own shortcomings. During games, he determined the strike zone based on the field markings and the batter's knees, etc., to judge balls and strikes. Here, there were no reference points, so his weakness as a batter was obvious.

"Good thing he's an idiot!" Sendou told himself again.

"Well! Forget it, let's skip this for now, keep pitching!" He quickly changed the subject.

"Okay!" The idiot continued to pitch without a shred of doubt.

"Pa!"

"Pa!"

"Pa!"

"Pa!"

"Pa!"

Five pitches in a row, all right down the middle, but each ball drifted in a different direction like a changeup.

"A ball right down the middle, no matter how much it drifts, it can't possibly drift out of the ball zone, right? Probably! Maybe! Yeah! That's right!" Sendou convinced himself little by little.

But he also strengthened his resolve to find a batter from his teammates in a month or two to use as a reference.

"Let him pitch to his heart's content today!" With that thought, Sendou called out.

"Eijun, you can keep pitching, I'll calculate the rest time and the number of pitches. We'll run tomorrow!" The so-called calculation of time and number of pitches was to arrange rest times based on actual game innings and the number of pitches per inning. After all, for a team like theirs, the pitcher's stamina was very important.

"Okay!!!"

I don't know if middle schools have an Autumn Tournament. However, in the Baseball Major League 2 manga, Daigo said there were quite a few middle school matches, so I'll assume there are. The practice will continue for a while. For a team made up of a bunch of amateurs, this time is all about constantly discovering problems and solving them. Finally, please recommend and favorite, thank you!