Chapter 237: Unwilling to Accept
"Are you going to let yourself be crushed and subbed out like this, or will you hold the line and keep pitching in the next inning? This is a situation that tests the very [quality] of you as a pitcher!" Miyuki put pressure on Sawamura in a completely unexpected way.
Kuramochi muttered a quiet complaint.
"…Never again! I'll never let you say something like that again!" After a brief silence, Sawamura's fighting spirit was completely ignited.
"How arrogant!" Ryo-san muttered under his breath.
"But what about the head-pat?" Seeing that the timeout was about to end, Sendo couldn't hold it in any longer.
Are they going to do it or not? Otherwise, why am I even here? Sendo thought, implying, Come on, make a move already! Otherwise, how am I supposed to stir up trouble here?
Sendo's personality was definitely not the type to stick his neck out. He liked taking advantage of the situation without becoming the obvious culprit, and he'd even rely on the presence of a ringleader to make the "victim" forget what he himself had done.
Several people finally noticed Sendo's presence.
"What are you doing here again? Hurry up and get back to your position!" Before Sendo could even answer, his neck was suddenly grabbed from behind. Jun's voice came from just over his shoulder.
Jun had spotted Sendo earlier slipping into the infield like a ghost, lurking behind everyone for ages without returning, and couldn't hold back any longer. He came over to drag the troublemaker away.
And so, with an arm wrapped around Sendo's neck, Jun began marching him off, feet splaying out as they went.
"What's with this guy? When did he even show up?" Kuramochi sighed. Once a problem child himself, now he found himself sighing at his successor.
"Seriously, what a troublesome guy… But hey, he's got a point!" Ryo-san added with a smile.
Just when Masuko thought his shiny head was in danger, Ryo-san spoke again, and to him, it sounded like the voice of an angel.
"Once the game's over, everyone can get their fill. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair to Jun out there in the outfield!" Onii-san declared.
After all, getting patted on the head in private was one thing; having it happen in front of everyone was on a completely different level of embarrassment.
"Huff!!!"
Suddenly, without any warning, Sawamura started to inhale deeply.
"Huh?" Kuramochi's heart skipped a beat at the sound.
The players at first and third base, Yuuki and Pudding-senpai, took the hint and hurriedly backed off.
This left only the middle infielders standing near the pitcher's mound. After all, the mound was within the middle infield's defensive range.
"I'll focus on the batter! I'll leave the defense to you guys…!"
"Wham! Chop!" Before Sawamura could finish shouting, Kuramochi landed a sharp kick, and Onii-san followed it up with a hand-chop to the head.
"Shut up!"
"Too loud!"
How does it feel to have Sawamura's booming voice shouting a command so loud that the entire defense could hear it?
Well, however annoying it was, the middle infielders were just that much closer to wanting to clock him!
...
After the game resumed, the infield players could all feel Maki's fighting spirit.
"Give it all you've got, Sawamura!" The team captain, Yuuki, was the first to speak, and the others quickly joined in.
"Let him hit it!" Pudding-senpai was the first to respond—speaking again, no less.
"Take him down! Urah!" Jun drew a deep breath and roared, his shout reverberating through the entire field.
As a pitcher, Maki's feel for the ball wouldn't be that far off. His previous batting had already proven his excellent sense of timing. (You can't help but wonder about Sawamura—his timing's off because he can't fully grasp the rhythm. Otherwise, he'd be a power hitter too.)
Moreover, Maki's towering height of over 195 centimeters spoke volumes about his raw strength.
If Maki weren't a star player, he wouldn't have been placed in the lower batting order. In a sense, you could call him Sawamura's perfect nemesis.
However, as Miyuki had emphasized, pitching is a collaborative creation between pitcher and catcher. It's not about recklessly hurling a straight fastball right down the middle.
Unlike Sendo—who excelled at American-style scooping hits and was beginning to show signs of a traditional batting approach—Maki was trained in a purely Japanese system. His resistance to low fastballs wasn't particularly strong.
If it were Sendobat the plate, you'd have to throw below the strike zone. Even pitches at the bottom edge of the zone would be too high for him, as that's his preferred range.
But when facing Maki, Miyuki opted to focus on lower pitches, starting with a low outside fastball. (To Sawamura, his quirky pitches made a pure four-seam fastball feel like a breaking ball.)
"Whew!" Sawamura took a deep breath.
Then came the windup, the stride, and the throw!
"Whoosh!"
"Boom!"
"Ping!"
"Foul!"
This pitch from Maki clearly went foul, but despite its low height, his sheer strength propelled it impressively far.
"That oddball pitch probably kept him from hitting it square, right? And he still hit it that far? Man, this guy's got serious power!"
Sawamura gaped at the result, momentarily stunned. Miyuki's sharp shout snapped him out of it, and he turned his eyes to the catcher with a serious expression.
Seeing that shot made it clear to Sawamura: if he delivered anything easier to hit, the consequences would be disastrous.
That swing sent a jolt through Sawamura's mind, conjuring the lingering image of Raichi's home run.
Yet rather than despair, the memory of that home run filled him with something else—frustration.
Sawamura's expression shifted from confusion to one of outright unwillingness to accept defeat. His brows furrowed into a fierce, angry scowl, and his gaze took on a… lethal edge.
Miyuki, relying on his experience and understanding of Sawamura, quickly realized that the pitcher's thoughts had flashed back to Raichi's home run. But upon seeing Sawamura's determined expression, Miyuki felt his own motivation ignite.
"Taller hitters with longer arms tend to have a vulnerability: pitches aimed at the chest-level inside corner," Miyuki thought to himself, pausing momentarily.
The closest comparison was Sendo, whose reach was even longer than Maki's despite being slightly shorter.
However, high inside fastballs were never Sendo's weak point. Thinking about Sendo in this context was pointless, leaving Miyuki silently exasperated.
"Anyway, let's stick to those outside pitches for now. When the batter starts to relax, we'll make our move…!" With that, Miyuki reset his glove target.
"Eijun! Take a deep breath! Relax your body—if you tense up too much, you might end up killing Maki!" Sendo shouted from the outfield.
"As if! Shut up already!" Sawamura turned and shouted back, face flushed.
Clearly, he knew what was being said. But there was no way Sawamura would admit to that in front of everyone.
Nevertheless, Sendo's advice had an impact. Sawamura absorbed the words and followed through.
"Breathe in… four seconds…"
Pause for three seconds…
"Exhale…" for a full second.
After a few rounds of this, his body gradually relaxed.
Sendo's comment had unintentionally hit the mark. While he'd assumed that the previous pitch had put mental pressure on Sawamura, the reality was that Sawamura's frustration and sheer determination had caused him to tense up too much.
By chance, Sendo's suggestion helped alleviate that tension.
"Although it's hard to hit it squarely or perfectly time it, the pitch itself is easy to read," Maki thought to himself.
"Inashiro Industrial, Ichidaisan High, and Seidou High School… How many years have these three been known as the top three teams in West Tokyo?
How many years has it been…
I just can't accept this!" Maki declared.
"Even though we have equal strength, why do you still harbor such an inferiority complex toward those three teams, no matter how much time passes?
This is what I can't stand!" These were words that had been bottled up inside Coach Ugai for years, almost like a demon in his heart.
Over the years, the players from these three powerhouses had consistently been their team's aces, cleanup hitters, and other star players of equal renown.
As for the talented but lesser-known players—other strong teams' supporting cast or the core players from weaker teams who still had a certain level of ability—they only managed to enter the second-tier powerhouses.
Coach Ugai's frustration stemmed from this very point.
How could these players not feel inferior when, in junior high, the top names in the game—players so famous you didn't even need to know their names to recognize them—were a generation of exceptionally gifted athletes? Those left behind in junior high naturally developed feelings of inadequacy toward them.
And not to mention the three great powerhouses—look at their records year after year!
Even Seidou, which hadn't reached Koshien for a long time, was never considered undeserving of being called one of the three great powerhouses.
The three great powerhouses rarely lost to other teams and often traded wins and losses among themselves.
Meeting twice or three times a year, the outcomes alone didn't reveal much, as their overall strengths were similar.
At most, people thought that Seidou had been unlucky in recent years, unable to find a good pitcher, or that famous junior high players who were set on joining a team bound for Koshien hesitated and decided against choosing Seidou.
For players of Narumiya's caliber, the three great powerhouses held no particular bias—this was evident from the way Narumiya reacted when he heard Miyuki was going to Seidou.
Even though it had only been to Koshien once in recent years, the deeper implication was still recognition of Seidou as a powerhouse.
Think about Narumiya's personality: if he didn't respect the school, he would have gone ballistic hearing Miyuki wanted to join.
Considering how he could be so sharp-tongued toward even upperclassmen like Tanba, you could imagine how harsh his words would be for a school he didn't respect.
Even today, Inashiro's third batter made a haughty remark about Sensen.
Although he acknowledged Sensen's strength this year, his tone carried the superior attitude of a member of the three great powerhouses toward a more ordinary powerhouse.
Narumiya's offhand comments about Seidou back then were already a sign of respect for the three great powerhouses.
In fact, Seidou's recent branding as a "revived powerhouse" turned into a hot topic for reporters every year.
Professional teams and scouts from prestigious universities flocked to Seidou's players every year.
The satisfaction they expressed with Seidou's consistently well-trained recruits proved that Seidou hadn't declined at all.
The only issue was that the school's lack of national fame made it harder to recruit players from across the country.
Many private schools supported baseball not because of a deep love for the sport but because of the promotional power it offered.
A trip to Koshien and frequent media coverage served as the best possible advertisements for student recruitment.
Even families that didn't particularly like baseball would be drawn to a school whose name was familiar and whose academic reputation and college admission rates were excellent.
Naturally, they'd choose a school they recognized.
Seidou's eagerness to reach Koshien, including Coach Kataoka's resignation, could be explained by the school's perspective.
Changing the coach was part of that strategy.
More students meant more revenue, which allowed the school to provide for the baseball team—covering costs for the players' tuition, uniforms, meals, and even free equipment.
Without subsidies, raising a baseball player was incredibly expensive.
Though Coach Kataoka resigned out of shame for failing to deliver results, it didn't erase these underlying pressures.
Back to the game.
"Whoosh!"
"Ping!"
"Foul!"
"Whoosh!"
"Pop!"
"Ball!"
"Ping!"
"Foul!"
Several pitches in a row were low and outside, carefully placed below the strike zone, with a few even falling well out of the zone.
For Maki, these wide pitches felt frustratingly out of reach.
As long as Sawamura's pitches didn't land on the sweet spot of the bat, it was difficult for Maki to get the ball into play.
Even though Sendo had never taught him any technical baseball knowledge in junior high—so much so that infield defense often had to cover for him—Sawamura had been training diligently with the explosive power program Sendo provided since elementary school.
Although training couldn't push him beyond his natural velocity limits, it helped him reach his maximum potential much faster.
In fact, traditional baseball training methods wouldn't have even gotten him close to his limit.
It's like the Cuban Missile pitcher, who could throw a 169 km/h fastball. Sports scientists analyzing his body concluded that he was capable of safely throwing over 170 km/h. Yet his top speed was 169 km/h, and he got injured throwing that one pitch.
That's the difference in approach.
Even professional baseball trainers aren't necessarily experts in explosive strength training, and the gap between them and the world's top specialists in this area can be significant.
Sendo's training regimen, however, was based on advice personally sought out by coach Nakani from some of the world's foremost authorities on explosive power.
These included a reaction master who once held the title of "the fastest man alive" and could catch objects moving over 300 km/h with his bare hands, as well as a grandmaster of a dojo dedicated to reflex training.
At the time, since Sendo was still very young, the routines he received were gentle and safe. But after years of focusing on explosive strength, the result is that Sawamura's current fastball is at least 5 km/h faster than it was at the same stage in his previous life.
Of course, the lead in velocity will diminish over time since the raw physical numbers set natural limits.
The more one trains, the smaller the room for improvement.
Even for someone like Sendo, further physical development came primarily from targeting and strengthening certain specific areas of his body.
Beyond that, it became a matter of correcting posture errors to achieve noticeable improvements. After a certain point, continued progress relies heavily on refining technique.
This is the same for both Sawamura and Furuya. As raw and unpolished players, they have countless opportunities to evolve.
On the other hand, a pitcher like Narumiya who has already maximized both his physical and technical capabilities has very little room to grow, aside from minor refinements in control—and those improvements are generally limited.
This is precisely why Hongou is regarded so highly.
In the future, Narumiya's fastball velocity may not increase much at all.
However, players like Hongou and Furuya, especially Furuya, still have significant potential for improvement.
Hongou's future ceiling could very well include top speeds exceeding 160 km/h, with an average velocity of at least 155 km/h.
Furuya could potentially maintain an average velocity of over 160 km/h, making him a modern version of Shohei Ohtani.
Although modern baseball isn't entirely dominated by fastball velocity, you absolutely cannot succeed without it.
Velocity ultimately determines a pitcher's ceiling. In Major League Baseball, nearly all top-tier pitchers—aside from rare knuckleballers—can reach 160 km/h or more. Such velocity deprives hitters of the time needed to visually identify pitch types.
Against these high-speed pitches, hitters often have to commit to their swings preemptively.
For fastballs, they need to anticipate and start their swing early, while against breaking balls, they might end up swinging empty-handed.
Top hitters rely on their ability to guess the pitch, and this is where elite fastball pitchers hold a decisive advantage.
Particularly, there's that pitcher with a sinker exceeding 160 km/h. Even catchers struggle to handle it at times.
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