Only fourteen players represented the second and third years.
Nine of them had passed through layers of selection to represent the second string, each with a chance to challenge for a first string spot. Add the five players already on the first string, Zhang Han, Chris, Kawakami, Miyauchi, and Masuko Toru, and that was the full roster.
At the start of the game, Zhang Han and Chris had not played. The remaining nine second-year players naturally assumed they would only see action in the back half, substituting in for Kawakami and Miyauchi.
The first string competition didn't concern them much, or so they had thought. In other words, most of the players currently on the field had expected to play the whole game. Even with two substitutions, that still meant four or five solid innings.
So they had been taking their time, playing it steady and deliberate.
Then Zhang Han spoke up, and Coach Kataoka's response changed everything. The players suddenly realized their window to perform might be much smaller than they had assumed. Under those circumstances, they had to move fast and produce results immediately. If they were unlucky enough to be pulled for Zhang Han, they might lose their chance to perform at all.
Spurred on by Zhang Han and Coach Kataoka working in tandem, the players' approach to the game flipped completely. Patience was no longer the priority. They wanted results, and they wanted them now.
The change showed immediately in their play.
Kanemaru, whose hitting ability was genuinely strong, found himself rattled by the sudden intensity from the upperclassmen. His swing lost its usual power. The bat barely grazed the ball, and the desperate second baseman on the field stopped it cleanly.
That second baseman wasn't tall, had a flat top haircut, and didn't look especially imposing. But his eyes were enough to make Kanemaru uneasy.
"Kijima Rei."
Zhang Han looked at Chris. Chris looked back.
A second-year who had become Seido's starting second baseman on the second string. His talent wasn't bad, and his effort was obvious to anyone watching. He likely had a future on the first string roster eventually.
Just not yet. Not for another six months at least.
The current Seido second baseman was someone closer to a demon than a player, and even with all his effort, Kijima hadn't closed that gap. Not even close.
Back in the freshman dugout, Kanemaru grumbled.
"It's just a welcome match. Aren't the upperclassmen taking this a bit too seriously?"
Coach Ochiai, who had been quietly pinching his little beard, turned on him with real displeasure.
"If that's how you think, you don't need to be playing in this game."
Ochiai had always been gentle with them, and the sudden shift in his expression made the freshmen genuinely uneasy.
He looked them over.
"High school baseball lasts two and a half years at most, and there's no turning back once that time passes. For the players currently on that field, missing this opportunity might mean they don't get another. Do you understand what that means? If you don't have the resolve to beat them, if you don't have the resolve to fight them to the end, then don't play at all. Don't drag the others down with you."
He looked at the young men in front of him, their resolve visibly hardening, and although his expression stayed stern, he was quietly thrilled inside.
He had watched Coach Kataoka deliver speeches like this to players many times before, full of weight and conviction. He had always wanted a chance to do the same. Now he finally had one.
As the freshman team's coach, he had gotten to deliver a speech of his own, in the same register as Coach Kataoka.
It had landed well.
"That felt good."
Since joining Seido, he had watched how Coach Kataoka actually worked with players, and it was nothing like what he had experienced at his previous post. He wasn't managing a roster of interchangeable pieces anymore.
He was guiding a group of young warriors. The job wasn't to wave a flag and call plays. It was to organize and motivate people who were genuinely fighting for something.
Hearing Coach Ochiai's words, the freshman team's morale climbed.
Motivated freshmen are a different animal entirely.
Toujou, pitching for the freshman side, came out in an impressive state from the first batter. His velocity was solid, his control sharp. If there was a weakness, it was his breaking ball, which was still underdeveloped. Almost everything he threw was a fastball, with breaking balls appearing only rarely.
The senior players noticed the pattern immediately.
This was, after all, a first-year pitcher. His breaking ball hadn't matured into a real weapon yet. Which meant the hitting plan was simple: sit on the fastball.
"Ping!"
The first third-year batter worked through a five-pitch at-bat before he had Toujou's pattern figured out completely. Once he did, he attacked without hesitation, looking exclusively for the fastball.
When the ball was hit, the freshman fielders, still locked into the rhythm of the at-bat, were caught flat-footed. They reached the ball too late. The batter had already reached first.
No outs, runner on first.
The senior team had launched a sudden offensive and caught Toujou off guard.
To his credit, Toujou felt he had actually pitched well. Living alongside Zhang Han every day had given him a clear understanding of just how far his own strength still trailed his senior's.
Despite carrying the title of national runner-up pitcher from his middle school days, his expectations for this game had never been especially high. Better to stay grounded and focus on executing each pitch well. If he did that consistently, the results should follow.
That daily proximity to Zhang Han had also given Toujou a realistic sense of the gap between himself and the upperclassmen here. He had come into today's game with some mental preparation for that gap. What he hadn't prepared for was just how much harder it would actually be.
The third-year senior who had just batted wasn't a standout among the second string. Toujou didn't even know his name. But facing him directly was a completely different experience than watching from the sidelines.
Sharp eyes. Solid contact. Whatever kind of pitch came into the zone, that senior found a way to drive it.
Toujou had never felt that kind of pressure before, not even at the national tournament.
This was the baseline strength of Seido's second string.
And that senior was still a long way from making the first string. Everyone understood that, among the second string players, only two or three genuinely had a shot at promotion. The rest were essentially making up the numbers.
The third-year senior who had just batted was one of those numbers.
And even he had shown that kind of polish.
What would the players actually hoping for promotion look like at the plate? And what about Masuko, Miyauchi, Chris, players who had already been on the first string?
And Han-san.
Just thinking about facing Zhang Han made Toujou's heart pound.
Their history went back to Toujou becoming the pitcher for Matsukata Little League. In hitting, Zhang Han had always had the edge. But on the mound, Toujou had never believed himself inferior. Overall, the two had always felt evenly matched.
Part of why Toujou had chosen Seido was the generous offer the school had made him. Part of it was wanting to follow the same path Zhang Han was walking, to keep growing alongside him, even from a distance.
He glanced toward the runner at first. As expected, the senior was taking an aggressive lead off the bag.
This kind of fighting spirit from the upperclassmen wasn't something a group of new arrivals could match yet.
Toujou took a breath and set himself to pitch.
The moment he started his motion, the runner broke for second.
"A straight steal?"
The freshmen in the dugout were stunned.
Stealing a base successfully isn't easy. It requires real confidence backed by careful reading of the situation. The game had only just started. The senior team barely knew anything about Toujou's strength yet.
Where was that confidence coming from?
A miscalculation here would hand the freshmen a free out.
"Excellent."
In the senior team's dugout, Chris wore a small, approving smile.
"This freshman team just came together. Even with individual talent, a week of practice together isn't enough to build real chemistry. There's no way they've developed the kind of trust between players that this requires yet."
The senior who had broken for second had read exactly that gap and exploited it without hesitation.
Watching the runner go, something tightened in Toujou's chest.
He had originally planned to throw a breaking ball, but he switched to a fastball immediately. A breaking ball risked a passed ball with a catcher who wasn't fully in sync with him yet, and an error at this moment would be costly.
But that wasn't even the biggest concern.
Timing was.
The runner at first had been placed in the leadoff spot specifically for his speed. Not quite Kuramochi's level, but fast, and getting faster with every step.
Toujou had a feeling that if he threw a breaking ball, his catcher wouldn't even get a clean throw off to second in time.
So he committed to the fastball.
That decision put the freshmen in a difficult spot.
The senior team's second batter was a strong second-year hitter named Yamaguchi. Watching the ball come in, a fierce smile spread across his face.
"I've been waiting for this."
It was a fastball. From the moment the runner broke for second, the pitch was practically guaranteed to be one. Yamaguchi didn't need to think. He just had to swing.
"Ping!"
Unlike the first batter, Yamaguchi connected immediately, driving the ball cleanly. He dropped his bat and sprinted for first.
The ball took a high bounce, and the runner who had broken for second never stopped, rounding the bag and continuing all the way to third.
No outs, runners on first and third.
Toujou, who had carried real ambition into this game, had just absorbed a brutal opening blow.
These second string batters had all survived their own selection process and earned their place on the roster. Every one of them had genuine ability. More importantly, their chemistry as a unit, built over more than a year together, was something the freshmen, a week into knowing each other, simply couldn't match yet.