Chapter 241: Watching from the Sidelines and Analyzing
"What a sharp pitch! Adding a breaking ball on top of that will make it even harder to hit!"
"I'm going to watch every single detail!" As soon as Haruichi finished speaking, Sawamura imitated senior Miyauchi's mouth movements and said, "Then I'll make sure to hit it no matter what!"
"Are you talking nonsense again, Sawamura?" Sendo replied.
"Who's talking nonsense here?" Sawamura retorted, his expression turning flustered.
"Hmm? Who's being silly now~?" Sendo dragged his words playfully.
"...!" Sawamura pretended to focus on the game to deflect the conversation.
"Don't you think it's time to start pitching again?"
Meanwhile, Furuya was completely uninterested in watching the game.
"Hey everyone! Come over here for your lunchboxes!"
"There are many kinds, so feel free to pick your favorite!"
"Everyone!"
"Grab one quickly if you want first pick!"
"!" At that moment, Haruno, Takako, Yui, Sachiko, and Fumino all called out as they approached with the lunchboxes.
Fumino had already grabbed one for Sendo.
She held it high, looking so adorable that he wanted to pinch her cheeks.
There was something naturally charming about her in that moment—completely different from her usual self—so genuine it was almost disarming rather than contrived or overly cutesy.
"Lunchboxes…" Sendo muttered under his breath, making a silent quip in his mind.
Then everyone started picking up their lunchboxes one by one…
The Seidou players ate their lunches while watching the pre-game warm-ups—somewhat like watching a show before the actual game began.
By the time the game officially started, their meals were already finished.
Since the spot Seidou had chosen was wide open, everyone just sat wherever they wanted.
Once the game began, the first and second batters for Inashiro Industrial were quickly retired. For every out, the Sakurazawa bench cheered loudly.
Sendo could tell that the players' physical abilities were lacking—so much so that the infielders couldn't make direct throws and had to rely on bounces to make plays.
Yet they still managed to efficiently retire their opponents, which reminded Sendo of his junior high days at Akagi.
The two teams were oddly similar.
Their defense and ace pitcher formed the backbone of their strategy, while the rest of the players just needed to maintain solid defense to rack up outs. By comparison, Akagi's lineup back then was stronger than Sakurazawa's.
Not only did they have Sendo as a potent scoring threat, but his teammates were also fundamentally sound and posed significant threats with bunts and aggressive baserunning.
Of course, this knuckleball pitcher was not someone junior-high Sawamura could have competed against.
"Why... why can't we hit such a slow pitch!" Sawamura was the first to lose his composure.
"Nice! Nice ball!" shouted (name).
"??" Sendo's ears twitched.
"Hey, that's pronounced the same as your name! I wonder if it's written the same way?" Fumino leaned closer, examining Sendo's expression.
"Who knows!" Sendo replied curtly, leaving it unclear whether he was irritated or just indifferent.
"Ha! You're interested in that guy!" Childhood friends like Fumino had a knack for seeing through any pretense.
"Chris-senpai!" Miyuki turned to Chris for confirmation.
"Ah, no doubt about it! That's definitely a knuckleball!"
"Hah! Seems my name's pronunciation has some mysterious charm!" Sendo half-jokingly thought to himself.
"Ping!"
"Thud!"
"Out!"
"Now this is revealing a few things! We're starting to see Inashiro Industrial's true strength," Sendo remarked as the inning ended in three up, three down.
"Hey? You're not worried about Inashiro Industrial at all?" Miyuki teased.
"Those pitches aren't something you can hit by luck. And he's not a pitcher you can beat with just a bit of good fortune. If they can't hit, the outcome will be the same every inning! That guy!" Sendo focused his gaze on Narumiya Mei.
"Are you that sure? In baseball, anything can happen!"
"Ah! Those guys won't be able to hit him. If they need to rely on bounces for their throws, it shows their shoulders are weak, their throws aren't precise. It also shows their hitting isn't precise either."
The swing speed isn't fast enough—against a straight fastball right down the middle, you'd still need to swing early just to time it right.
Even then, whether you can make solid contact is uncertain. Throw in a changeup to disrupt their rhythm, and the chances will never come.
The longer the game drags on, the more psychological pressure will mount on Sakurazawa's players. Defensive errors and mental lapses are bound to occur.
And furthermore…"
"Furthermore, a knuckleball pitcher cannot afford even the slightest loss of composure!" Chris-senpai chimed in, clearly impressed by Sendo's analysis.
"Although I've never seen a knuckleball myself, no matter how much it's praised as a mysterious pitch, if it doesn't have that signature movement, it's just a slow, ordinary lob. If you can't hit a home run off of that, you're just a nobody!"
Sawamura and Furuya, on the other hand, wore puzzled expressions. This level of discussion was way over their heads.
"Whoosh!"
"Thud!"
"Strike!"
"Batter out!"
"Ah!" Even though Sawamura couldn't follow Sendo's detailed breakdown, he did see the pitcher strike out three batters in a row.
In the top of the second inning, Harada came up to bat.
"So, how do you think he'll deal with that knuckleball?" Jun-san asked, his tone serious.
"Harada has the skillset for hitting to all fields! To some extent, Sendo, you're the same type of player. The difference is, you rely on physical ability, while Harada relies on technique." (Hitting to all fields means being able to handle inside and outside pitches, fast and slow, without any weaknesses, and being capable of pulling inside pitches or going the other way on outside pitches.)
"In other words, his reaction time is just too slow," Sendo said, looking down at Harada.
"It's you who's too fast, you jerk!" Jun-san shot back, though there was a sense of resignation in his voice.
In this world, there really are players who are untouchable in their era—players who can only be compared to legendary figures from different times. For example, Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O'Neal. Though separated by decades, both possessed unparalleled physical attributes.
Both had the speed of guards despite their towering heights—7 feet tall with elite wingspans.
Chamberlain had incredible arm strength, and before his basketball career, he was a high jumper who could nearly match the world record of his time.
O'Neal, on the other hand, was a powerhouse of a different era, famously breaking backboards repeatedly with his immense strength.
Even so, O'Neal had his own "seal of the gods": a childhood injury that left his shooting hand unable to bend fully, making free throws a particular challenge.
Still, his hooks were accurate enough, provided he put in the effort to practice.
During his playing days, O'Neal was known to indulge in donuts while watching his weight climb steadily. Yet even relying mostly on his natural physical gifts and a certain degree of skill, he dominated the entire league.
When compared to these players, some aspects of Sendo's speed and reaction time might still be within human limits, but in other respects, he is undoubtedly in a class of his own.
His explosiveness, his instantaneous acceleration, his sustained speed, his reaction time, his dynamic vision, his flexibility, his balance—all these traits, along with hand size and grip strength (which are crucial for baseball), place him in a realm that surpasses ordinary human standards.
If Sendo were to play basketball, his shooting touch alone—being able to control and feel even the smallest variations in force—would make him a ridiculous long-range shooter.
This natural control is also why he doesn't need extensive practice to develop ball-handling skills.
In terms of baseball, his control is so precise that he can throw a pitch over a hundred meters straight into the strike zone, landing it squarely in the catcher's glove with minimal movement.
If you were to translate his abilities into basketball terms, you might describe him as a shortened, physically enhanced version of Michael Jordan with Steph Curry's refined shooting touch, Magic Johnson's court vision and intelligence, and Allen Iverson's unstoppable driving ability—all rolled into one.
This overwhelming physical superiority means that no matter how skilled or unskilled his opponents are, they pose no real challenge. It's an absolute gap in power.
For ordinary players, however, guys like Harada or Narumiya Mei are still formidable. A knuckleball is, in a sense, a cheat code for turning players with limited physical abilities into top-tier relief pitchers.
That said, the knuckleball still requires talent—just in a more specific and demanding way.
"Chris-senpai! While we have this opportunity, could you please explain the knuckleball?" Sawamura, unable to follow the high-level discussion between his senior teammates, asked Chris for a simple explanation.
"Good point!" Chris-senpai suddenly remembered that there were still some rookies on the team who didn't understand what was being discussed.
"Curl your fingers against the ball, grip it firmly, and when you release, flick it with your fingers to apply a spin that's opposite of a regular fastball. This makes the ball nearly spinless. The turbulence in the air then causes it to move unpredictably—so unpredictably that even the pitcher doesn't know exactly how it will behave. Because it's so hard to catch, catchers often use special gloves. It's not a pitch just anyone can throw. That's why it's called a 'magic ball.'"
"You know, it's called a knuckleball in English because the motion resembles a butterfly's fluttering. That's also why it's sometimes referred to as a 'butterfly ball,'" Sendo added.
"So you're telling me even the pitcher doesn't know how it'll move? What an irresponsible pitch!" Sawamura exclaimed, wide-eyed.
"Your own quirk ball isn't all that different!" Chris-senpai quipped, making Sawamura pretend not to hear.
"The more you try to figure out how to hit the knuckleball, the more you're playing into Sakura's game." Rushing to retaliate will unsettle the team and trigger mistakes. Up until now, that's likely how teams facing Sakurazawa have ended up losing," Miyuki analyzed.
It was obvious that he was referring to the third round against the seeded team they'd faced in their opening game—a situation where their opponents' instability had given Sakura an even greater advantage.
"That's also what sets the teams that lost to them apart from Inashiro Industrial. With Narumiya on the mound—and because they've been to Koshien—this team doesn't panic into making defensive errors or losing composure."
"And with that man on the field, even just making contact with the ball feels like winning the lottery. Forget about getting back-to-back hits, let alone long hits!"
"This game's outcome was decided long ago," Sendo reiterated confidently.
"Can't argue with that," Miyuki admitted without the slightest objection this time.
"Strike!"
"Strike!"
"Strike!"
"Batter out!"
As soon as Narumiya Mei was mentioned, he struck out the batter with an exaggerated swing, leaving the Seidou players visibly dismayed.
"Hey!" Sendo spoke up.
"Hm?" Everyone turned to look at him.
"Doesn't that guy remind you of someone on our team?" Sendo said, pointing at Narumiya Mei.
"Yeah! He really does!" The seniors all fell silent, their gazes flickering over to Sawamura, who was watching the game with wide eyes.
"But he's kind of endearing, isn't he? I wouldn't mind if he kept swinging like that," Sendo added with a mischievous smirk.
The seniors collectively decided to ignore him.
Sakurazawa had just gained momentum by getting three quick outs, only for Narumiya Mei's back-to-back strikeouts to stifle their morale once again.
As Sendo had predicted, these hitters needed to swing early even against a fastball. It was almost impossible for them to hit Narumiya's pitches.
"What a garbage pitch!" Sawamura burst out when Narumiya struck out Sakurazawa's pitcher with a changeup.
"That's a type of breaking ball!" Haruichi quickly tried to calm him down.
...
"Could you hit it like that? If it were you, could you do it?" Miyuki asked eagerly after Carlos, Inashiro's second batter, hit a towering fly ball using a relaxed, whip-like arm motion rather than a full-body swing.
In Carlos, Miyuki saw a hint of Sendo's style.
"If I hit it like that!" Sendo was confident in his explosiveness, but his cautious nature prevented him from making a definitive statement. He wasn't the type to claim something he hadn't proven he could do—often, he wouldn't even admit it after achieving it.
"That arm-whipping swing is definitely better for timing those slow, erratic pitches! That dark-skinned guy has some impressive power, too!" Sendo added after a moment of consideration.
"That's good to hear!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Nothing!" Miyuki said with a cheerful smile.
"You're not trying to make some pointless comparison again, are you?" Sendo said, exasperated.
...
"I'm going to grab a drink—Sakurazawa's defense isn't worth watching," Sendo said before slipping away.
As the game wore on, the pressure from Narumiya Mei's relentless strikeouts began to affect Sakura's fielding.
Just as Sendo predicted, defensive errors led to consecutive runners reaching base. The knuckleball's inherent weakness—that batters are almost guaranteed to make contact—left the pitcher helpless if the fielders made mistakes. Moreover, the pitch's slow velocity undermined their ability to handle stolen bases effectively.
What ultimately delivered the fatal blow to Sakura wasn't just the mounting defensive errors. Their pitcher, suddenly fired up, began throwing with newfound intensity. For a knuckleball pitcher, maintaining a mindset of "nothingness" is paramount—but once that composure faltered, their effectiveness crumbled.
"Ping!"
Harada's three-run home run was, in a way, the game's conclusion. Although the match technically wasn't over, it had reached a point where the outcome was clear. Even so, there was still value in continuing to watch, because the heart of Inashiro's game remained Narumiya Mei's pitching.
When Sendo returned, he arrived just in time to see Harada striking his victorious pose after the home run.
"What happened?" Sendo asked.
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