Talent (End)

"I'm back!"

"Welcome home. You're a little early today. Did something happen?"

"We had testing today, so we finished a little early. But Mom, Coach said that if I wanted to prioritize batting, I could be a pitcher or catcher. He also said he'd let me join the First Team."

"Is that so? We should celebrate today. Is there anything you want for dinner?"

"Beef curry! With lots of beef!"

"You really do love meat, don't you?"

"Of course. Humans are carnivores!"

"All right, I'll make beef curry for you."

"Yosh!"

As a foodie, Sendou lightly clenched his fist and muttered to himself.

When practice began after school the next day, Coach Nakanishi had the veteran players practice defense while he personally led the new players through batting practice.

Sendou once again went last. There were five Pitching Machines inside, each set to throw 80-kilometer fastballs.

On average, everyone had to hit several dozen pitches.

An 80-kilometer fastball was already exhausting for the new players. Most of them swung and missed, with only a pitiful few infield Ground Balls.

However, as their number of swings increased, they gradually began making contact.

"Next is the final group. Sendou, Sasaki, Yamada, Satou, Kimura—you five, put on your helmets."

"Yes!"

"Yeah~!" the five answered in unison. Naturally, Sendou was the one who dragged out his response.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!" The five Pitching Machines began firing one after another.

"Smack! Whiff! Whiff! Thump! Clang!"

Various missed swings answered. Only Sasaki barely made contact, sending out a Ground Ball, while Sendou simply watched the pitch pass without swinging.

That guy had drifted off again earlier and had not watched anyone else bat at all, so he had not noticed the pitch speed. The others had watched the players before them from behind, while Sendou used the first pitch to observe.

"That bastard!"

Seeing this, how could Coach Nakanishi not realize that Sendou had been spacing out the whole time? He cursed inwardly.

However, he did not immediately lose his temper. This was hardly the first or second time that guy had done it.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

The second pitches flew out.

"Smack! Thump! Thump! Bang! Clang!"

This time, only one person failed to hit the ball. Sasaki had already sent one cleanly beyond the infield for a Long Hit.

Sasaki was also one of the most outstanding among this year's new players who had received tuition reductions.

After all, aside from those who had money to spare, anyone who dared sign up for the Wildcats—even those whose entry tests had not gone well—was highly confident in themselves.

For players who had just entered other Little Senior League teams, an 80-kilometer pitch was practically impossible to hit.

Probably only regular players could make consistent contact.

But for people like those on the Wildcats, they adapted after just a few pitches.

However, at that moment, everyone overlooked everything else.

Everyone stared straight at the ball that flew far away and slammed heavily into the wire fence marking a center field Home Run.

If this had not been an enclosed batting cage, the ball would surely have sailed over the fence net around the field.

Coach Nakanishi was among them.

He had never imagined that the "some batting talent" Sendou Ichiro had mentioned about his son meant this.

Right now, he only wanted to roar: Watching one pitch and then hitting a Home Run was called having some talent?

When had baseball's standards for talent become so high?

To those children, it merely seemed a little too impressive.

But to him and the scorekeeper who had witnessed it, it was genuinely terrifying.

If a first-year high school beginner—fifteen years old—hit a 100-kilometer pitch for a Home Run on one of his first few swings in his first batting practice session, and could turn pitches over 120 kilometers into hits, he could be called a once-in-several-decades genius batter.

What was this? Sendou, who had been born in November, was only nine years old!

(In Cross Game, the protagonist had just turned eleven. He hit a 100-to-110-kilometer fastball thrown by a real pitcher for a Home Run on the second pitch. There was some luck involved, but Long Hits came easily to him.

However, Kida Muramitsu had been swinging a bat since he was three, and he was still far inferior to a batter on Azuma's level.

The strongest batter in MIX should be on the same level as Azuma. His younger brother was likewise a genius batter, but as mentioned above, during his first batting practice from his third year of middle school to his first year of high school, he could consistently hit 100-kilometer pitches for Home Runs and easily produce Long Hits off 120-kilometer pitches.

The protagonist was meant to be even stronger than them, because Japan currently did not have any top-tier Major League power hitters.

The protagonist's talent was to be based on that Major League Thanos, raised by another level. Therefore, an untrained nine-year-old was a little stronger than the eleven-year-old Cross Game protagonist Kida Muramitsu, who had been swinging since age three.)

After that, it was completely Sendou's personal showcase. A Pitching Machine threw along a fixed Ball Trajectory, at a fixed speed and along a fixed line, so as long as one mastered the timing, making contact was not difficult. But Sendou was the only one whose every ball flew that far.

Even Sasaki, the best performer aside from him, had only hit one Home Run. For fourth-grade students, hitting Home Runs was still very difficult unless they had begun swinging a bat at a very young age.

Sendou relied entirely on the force generated by his explosive bursts of power to sweep the balls out of the field.

In the end, out of twenty pitches, aside from the first one he watched go by, Sendou hit thirteen massive Home Runs. The remaining six had all fallen just short.

There was a saying about batting against Pitching Machines: only those who could maintain a hit rate above eighty percent against one were qualified to seek a decisive victory against a person throwing at the same speed.

And that was merely a decisive victory. But against someone throwing at the same speed, a hitter who blasted Home Runs or near-Home-Run Long Hits throughout would only leave the pitcher to take a beating. They were not even in the same dimension.

Coach Nakanishi was now considering how to prepare for Sendou's integration into the First Team.

For elementary school players, 110 kilometers was already the limit. Even among middle schoolers, a 100-kilometer pitch was not slow.

Even in middle school hardball Little Senior League, 120 kilometers was not considered slow, while 140 kilometers was something seen only once in a decade.

Meanwhile, on the weak amateur school teams of middle school Soft Baseball, there were quite a few pitchers who only threw 80 kilometers.

And based on Sendou's results, even against a real person throwing 100 kilometers, the odds of him hitting a Home Run would be high.

The purpose of this batting session had only been to test their potential before beginning to correct each person's batting stance. Elementary school and middle school were both about cultivating proper technique and preventing improper technical movements from damaging a player's baseball career.

However, none of that had anything to do with Sendou. Coach Nakanishi had already taken him away for individual instruction.

Sendou was still an amateur. Although he had undergone some training and performed well,

he had achieved that only through talent. If he grew accustomed to the techniques previously taught to him, he would perform even better and would not leave hidden injuries behind.

As for Sendou, Coach Nakanishi no longer intended to train him step by step.

He would personally teach him some theoretical knowledge about pitching and catching, while forcefully instilling proper technical movements. Pitchers had many things to do but little theory to learn; they needed to practice gradually.

Therefore, the theory would mainly focus on catchers. Batting, pitching, and the like would become habitual through practical training, while catcher knowledge was Coach Nakanishi's old specialty.

This was Sendou's level when he relied purely on his physical dynamic and static talents. After his technique was corrected, he would become even stronger. That was also reality: most geniuses, even without training, were no worse than ordinary talented people who trained desperately, and were often a step stronger—just like the Heisei Monster Daisuke Matsuzaka back then. His middle school teammates recalled that he did not train at all in middle school, yet after seriously training for just over a year in high school, he won Koshien championships back to back.