Talent (Complete)

"I'm home!"

"Welcome back. You're a bit early today. Did something happen?"

"We had a test today, so it ended early. But Mom, the coach told me today that if I want to focus on batting, I can be a pitcher or catcher. He also said he'll put me on the first-string team."

"Is that so? We should celebrate tonight. Anything you want to eat?"

"Beef curry! Extra beef!"

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

"Of course! Humans are carnivores!"

"Alright, I'll make you beef curry."

"Nice!"

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

The next day after school, practice started with Coach Nakanishi having the veteran players work on fielding, while he took the new players to batting practice.

Sendou ended up last again. There were five pitching machines inside, set to throw 80 km/h fastballs.

Each person had to hit several dozen balls.

For the new players, an 80 km/h fastball was already tough. Most of them swung and missed, with only a few pathetic ground balls to the infield.

But as they took more swings, they started making contact.

"Next is the last group: Sendou, Sasaki, Yamada, Satou, Kimura. Put on your helmets."

"Yes!"

"Heh~!" The five answered in unison, with Sendou naturally drawing out his reply.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!" The five pitching machines launched balls one after another.

"Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Thwack!"

The responses were mostly empty swings. Only Sasaki managed to graze one, hitting a ground ball, while Sendou simply watched it go by without swinging.

That guy had spaced out again. He hadn't even watched the others swing, so he didn't notice the ball speed. Since everyone else had been watching the batters ahead of them, Sendou used his first pitch to observe.

"That bastard!"

Coach Nakanishi saw this and knew full well that Sendou had been zoning out again, cursing inwardly.

But he didn't blow up right away—this guy wasn't doing it for the first time.

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

The second pitch was thrown.

"Swish! Thwack! Thwack! Boom! Clang!"

This time, only one person missed the ball. Sasaki had already managed to send it past the infield for a long hit.

Sasaki stood out even among this year's tuition-waived new players.

After all, anyone who dared sign up for the Wildcats—aside from those with money to burn—was confident in themselves, even if their tryout results weren't stellar.

An 80 km/h fastball was practically impossible for most new little league players to hit.

Only the regulars could probably make consistent contact.

But for these Wildcats, a few swings were enough to adapt.

However, everything else was ignored at that moment.

Everyone stared straight at the small ball flying far away, smashing heavily into the center field home run fence.

If it weren't for the enclosed batting cage, that ball would have easily cleared the outfield wall.

That included Coach Nakanishi.

He never dreamed that Sendou's father, Sendou Ichiro, meant "some batting talent" was this.

He wanted to roar right then—observing just one pitch and then hitting a home run was called "some talent"?

When did the standard for baseball talent get so high?

To those kids, it was just a little too impressive.

But to him and the scorekeeper who saw it, it was terrifying.

If a high school freshman beginner—fifteen years old—could hit a 100 km/h pitch for a home run or a 120 km/h pitch for a clean hit within the first few swings of his first batting practice, he'd be called a once-in-a-generation genius hitter.

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

(In Cross Game, the protagonist is just turning eleven. He hits a home run off a 100 to 110 km/h fastball on the second pitch from a human pitcher—though there's some luck involved, a long hit is easy for him. But Kida has been swinging a bat since he was three, and he's far below a hitter like Azuma in level. MIX's top slugger is on par with Azuma, and his younger brother is also a genius hitter. But as mentioned, from junior high third year to high school first year, their first batting practice: 100 km/h fastballs are consistent home runs, 120 km/h long hits are easy. The protagonist is set to be a bit better than them, because Japan currently has no top-tier Major League sluggers. The protagonist's talent level is based on that Major League Thanos-level player, plus one tier. So a nine-year-old with no training is slightly stronger than the eleven-year-old Cross Game protagonist, the iron-armed pitcher Kida Muramitsu, who's been swinging since age three.)

After that, it was purely Sendou's personal showcase. A pitching machine has a fixed trajectory, fixed speed, and a fixed path—as long as you time it right, hitting it isn't hard. But Sendou was the only one sending every ball that far.

Even Sasaki, who performed the best aside from him, only managed a single home run. For fourth graders, hitting a home run was still extremely difficult unless they'd been swinging a bat since a very young age.

Sendou was relying purely on the power generated by his instantaneous explosive force to forcibly knock the ball out of the park.

In the end, out of those 20 pitches—aside from the first one he let go—Sendou hit 13 massive home runs, and the remaining 6 were balls that just barely missed.

There's a saying about hitting off a pitching machine: if you can maintain a hit rate of over 80% against it, you're qualified to go head-to-head with a pitcher of the same speed.

But that's just going head-to-head. With long hits like these—either home runs or close to it—a pitcher throwing at the same speed would only be on the receiving end. Honestly, they'd be in a completely different league.

Right now, Coach Nakanishi was considering how to prepare him for integration into the varsity team.

For elementary school students, 110 km/h was already the limit. Even 100 km/h wasn't slow among middle schoolers.

Even in middle school hardball Little Senior League, 120 km/h wasn't slow, and 140 km/h was something you'd only see once in a decade.

And in middle school soft baseball, among those amateur teams that were the bottom of the barrel, there were plenty of pitchers throwing at just 80 km/h.

As for Sendou's results, even against a real pitcher throwing 100 km/h, his chances of hitting a home run would be very high.

The purpose of this batting session was just to test potential, then start correcting everyone's batting stance. Elementary and middle school are about building proper technique, preventing bad mechanics or other factors from shortening a player's baseball career.

But none of that concerned Sendou. He had already been taken away by Coach Nakanishi for individual instruction.

Right now, Sendou was still a novice. He'd done some training and performed well, but that was all thanks to his natural talent. If he got used to the techniques he'd been taught earlier, he'd do even better—and without leaving any bad habits behind.

For Sendou, Coach Nakanishi didn't plan to develop him step by step.

Instead, he would personally explain theoretical knowledge about pitchers and catchers, and forcefully drill technical movements into him. A pitcher has a lot to do, but the theory is minimal—it takes slow, steady practice.

So the theory would mainly focus on the catcher's role. Hitting and pitching would be trained through actual practice to build habits, while catcher knowledge was Nakanishi's own specialty.

This was Sendou's level when relying purely on his physical dynamic and static talent. Once his technique was corrected, he'd be even stronger. It was also a reality: most geniuses, even without training, wouldn't be worse than ordinary players who trained like mad—they'd even be a step ahead. Just like the Heisei Monster, Daisuke Matsuzaka, back in the day. His middle school teammates recalled that the guy never trained in middle school, only seriously trained for a little over a year in high school, and then dominated Koshien consecutively.