Chapter Text
"Kazuya, you aren't part of any clubs or activities after school, right? You should join our team."
That was how it all started. A simple request from the kids who surrounded him at school. When he was younger, he would have called them friends. As an adult, he'd say they were more acquaintances by class-enforced proximity than people who he could be himself around without judgment, but he was grateful to them all the same. After all, they introduced him to the two great loves of his life.
Technically, Kazuya had played something called ‘baseball’ before that. Adults liked to call it baseball because it sounded grown up and it used a bat and a ball. Bases were, ironically, optional. It was the kind of thing he got roped into often since he was athletic enough to catch and throw a ball, but it didn’t have much in the way of rules or strategy or competition. It was mostly an excuse for children to burn off excess energy by running around instead of driving their parents insane.
Those games were fine, but nothing special. Kazuya didn't really care for his teammates or their anything-goes attitude to playing. He didn't enjoy playing games that couldn't be won. He liked people who didn't take winning seriously even less.
But in Kazuya’s last year of elementary school, his friends wanted to win. That changed everything.
"We're going to be short players in junior high at this rate. It would mean a lot if you joined so we could be on the Dragons together," Naya had said. She knew the most about baseball out of all of them, although she didn't play. Her dad used to be a baseball scout. Unfortunately, playing baseball wasn’t a good prospect for a lady according to her parents, so she’d never so much as swung a bat outside of gym class.
"You aren't even a manager, Naya-chan. Why do ya always gotta act like it's your team?" Raiku whined. He flicked a wad of paper onto her desk.
The last, and most studious member of their little squad brushed it away, rolling his eyes. "Stop being a jerk, Raikkun. You know she wants to be a manager one day. I think it's cool that she's already practicing recruiting people." Hiroshi smiled at Kazuya. It was close-lipped and mature for his age, unlike the cheeky grins his short friend was known for. "So what do you say, Kazuya-kun? We've got practices for a few weeks before we start playing real games. Join us?"
Truth be told, Kazuya didn't really want to go. But doing something was better than doing nothing. Since this was his dad's busy season, he was getting pretty bored reading cookbooks or watching tv for hours every night when he got home, and his school friends would probably keep bugging him if he didn't agree. Especially since it was Naya asking.
It was easiest to smile back at them and say, "Sure, sounds fun." His dad probably wouldn’t mind as long as he made it home before dinner.
Overjoyed, Naya clasped her hands together in one of the carefully crafted adorable gestures the puberty-afflicted boys in their class fawned over. Kazuya had seen her practice it in a mirror before, though he didn’t get why she cared so much about looking cute. It must have been a girl thing.
He was just glad she was happy. As far as girls went, Naya was pretty cool. Sure, she was overly bubbly at times, but she didn't giggle at him behind his back like the pack of popular girls who sat at the front of their class did or tease him for being shorter than her.
"That's great, Kazuya!" she squealed, bouncing in her chair.
Raiku's face scrunched up into a delinquent scowl. It was unusually menacing today, like he’d worked on it. He must’ve been watching a bunch of yakuza films again. "He doesn't even know anything about baseball. I can't believe you want him on the team so bad."
"He can learn!" Naya chirped. She was only half paying attention to her friend's grumbles as she dug through her bag. With a delighted hum, she pulled out a large paperback as thick as her hand and plopped it on Kazuya’s desk in front of him.
The Basics of Baseball . Curious, Kazuya picked it up and began thumbing through the pages.
It was the kind of book that suggested a history deeper than the flimsy paper it was printed on. The pages were stained and rippled from use, but otherwise, it was clearly well taken care of. Its margins overflowed with notes in pencil and pen. Some of them he recognized as Naya's relaxed characters, while others were written in the tight, exacting writing of an adult.
"It used to be my dad's. He gave it to me when I started to learn about baseball, and now you can use it to learn, too." Naya's clear-polished nail tapped on the page Kazuya had open about swing mechanics. "We start batting next week, so you should definitely read this page. Oh, and make sure you learn the positions, too! The coach likes to ask players where they want to play during tryouts."
"Not that there are many positions for shorties," Raiku remarked. "But I'm sure you'll figure something out, buddy. You're weird like that."
Kazuya shut the book with a laugh. "Why, thank you!"
Before Raiku could clarify that wasn’t a compliment, Hiroshi interjected, "You may be a weirdo, Kazuya-kun, but you're our little weirdo. It'll be nice to have you out there." He bumped Kazuya on the shoulder and the shorty smiled wider. "Some other guys and I walk over with our parents for weekend practice. Meet us out front of your dad's shop at 9am, okay? We’ll take you."
In the end, his dad didn’t take much convincing. Kazuya asked him after his first beer of the night, while the man was still exhausted from the day’s work and was finishing the last few bites of the meal his son prepared him.
“Baseball?” The adult rapped his chopsticks against his bottom lip.
“Yeah! My friends wanted me to join. Hiroshi-kun says he walks over with some of the other kids and their other dads in the morning, so I can just go with him. You don’t need to do anything extra.”
Kazuya’s dad shrugged. “Alright. Just make sure you get your homework done.”
“Great! Thanks, dad!”
He didn’t get an acknowledgment other than a tired nod, but Kazuya didn’t mind. He finally had something else to do on the weekends. One way or another, this was going to be more interesting than the nothing he’d been doing before.
But before he could have fun, he had to know the rules of the game he was playing since the kiddy ‘baseball’ he’d played before didn’t have any. He’d only learned a little bit from seeing an occasional game on TV. The announcers didn’t always explain stuff very well.
One hasty cleaning of the dining room table later, and Kazuya had holed himself up in his room to learn. This was how he preferred to do his homework. Surrounded by the quiet of his own space, not letting anyone bother him or bothering anyone else after his dad came upstairs for the night.
“Let’s see what Naya-chan’s book says,” Kazuya hummed as he sprawled out on his bed with the paperback in hand.
It had more in it than he thought. Diagrams of the field, positions, scorekeeping, and plays splayed across every page in faded black print. Some of them looked really complicated at first, but Kazuya barely noticed it once he started reading.
Baseball was fascinating. Nine players worked together like soldiers, each with their own specialty. It reminded him of the tiles on his grandfather’s shogi board, two lines of nine pieces in a row, where every piece had something unique about it. Throwing balls was more awesome than moving tiles, though.
And the most awesome thing of all was definitely the catcher’s mitt.
He was instantly fascinated by it, tracing the curves of its picture with his fingertip. It was so different from the rest. Padded and round, it looked like a target for pitchers to aim at like archers aimed their arrows at those big, circular drums. Not only that, but the catcher got to act like a general. He wore armor, set up strategies, and signaled to his men where to move and what to do. He was the only one who got to see everything that happened out there, and since catchers sat so close to the ground it shouldn’t matter if you were short.
Kazuya nodded as he snapped the book shut.
“Miyuki Kazuya is going to be a catcher!” he cheered.
An exasperated grumble answered through his bedroom walls, “Kazuya? Go to bed.”
The boy’s eyes drifted to the clock on his nightstand. Whoops. He’d been reading for so long that it was already past midnight. He rushed through his nightly routine, tossing his glasses on top of the baseball book and pulling a sleep mask over his eyes to block out the light of Tokyo’s streets through his window.
“Miyuki Kazuya is going to be a catcher,” he whispered to himself. “...if I’m able to get up in the morning.”
He did get up the next morning, hours after his dad and just in time for Hiroshi to greet him out front. A couple of other boys and parents he didn’t know were with them. Raiku lived in the wrong direction, so he would be joining them at the field instead.
“Naya-chan couldn’t make it today,” Hiroshi explained as he marched with the long, serious strides of a miniature adult. “But she likes to walk this way sometimes, too, to watch the games.”
A smirk split Kazuya’s face. “Does Raikkun know you two walk to practice together?”
“Kazuya. Please don’t tell him she’ll be walking with us,” Hiroshi groaned.
The other boys and parents laughed. Kazuya winked at his embarrassed friend. “I got it, I got it. Not a word. Wouldn’t want him to be a jealous idiot instead of just an idiot. I’ll make sure he leaves you alone.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about him being jealous of…” Hiroshi muttered under his breath.
Raiku, true to his reputation, was dramatic about the news of Naya not coming. He threw his arms in the air and kicked at the dirt of the infield. “After all that trouble to get Short-stuff to join, and she doesn’t even show up?”
“That girl’s the one who invited the pipsqueak? Man, she must really have felt bad for him.”
All three boys swiveled their heads away from each other and towards their interloper’s meanspirited cackles. Hirata Shintaro, one of the tallest boys in their class. He looked and sounded like a scrawny weed that grew too fast and was afraid of being blown over by a strong wind at any moment. He’d also become a complete jerk after he hit a growth spurt last year.
“What do you want, Shin tard o?” Raiku sneered, puffing himself up. “Naya-chan knows more about baseball than you ever will. Keep your dumb thoughts to yourself before they infect all of us.”
“I don’t take orders from losers or girls . I’m going to be this team’s ace, so you’d better learn some respect!” Shintaro shot back with a smug grin.
“Bet you can’t even pitch over the plate!”
“Better than you can!”
“Wanna bet?”
Hiroshi stepped between the two of them as they inched closer to each other. Raiku’s fists were raised and Shintaro had leaned in to loom over him with his extra few centimeters. The ever-rational one, Hiroshi put up his hands. “Guys, knock it off. Practice is about to start. I don’t want to miss it because you won’t stop fighting. We’re going to be fielding and hitting today, so why don’t you just keep score with that?”
“Fine by me.”
“Can’t wait to beat you.”
Kazuya rolled his eyes at the two hotheads. If he had to care about it, Raiku beating Shintaro would probably be the best outcome for him. They were both idiots, but at least Raiku might listen to him as the pitcher when Kazuya became the team’s catcher one day. Still, he didn’t want any part of their stupid contest.
That didn’t stop him from ending up in the middle of it during fielding practice.
“Did you see that?”
“How did he throw so fast?”
“But he’s so little!”
His classmates stopped their drills to stare at Kazuya after his throw to first. The other boys around third base stepped back, forming an uneasy halo around this little kid they had thought was just there to make memories. Shintaro and Raiku sized him up from second with twin looks of disgust. They’d both overthrown by a meter during their own drills and had been in the middle of arguing over which one of them sucked more when Kazuya’s ball had whizzed past them like a white laser.
Kazuya grinned at the whole field with ferocious glee. This baseball thing was already way more fun than he’d thought.
One of the coaches turned to the other, murmuring and writing something down.
“Don’t get any ideas pipsqueak! You’re too short to be a pitcher,” Shintaro hissed.
Raiku shoulder-checked the lanky kid. “Oi! He’s not the one you should be worried about.”
That got Shintaro’s attention back on his rival. He shoved the bulkier boy backward, though his noodle-thin arms didn’t do too much other than make Raiku take a single step back. The shorter of the two raised his fists again.
“Stop fighting out there!” the coach who wasn’t taking notes hollered at them. Both boys guiltily snapped to attention. “And get back to your bases! We’re doing one more round and then lining up for batting practice, got it?”
“Yes, sir!” answered a chorus of prepubescent male voices.
Batting practice was less of an instant success for Kazuya. He might have had a small strike zone compared to some of the other kids, but with adults throwing to them, he had to swing at every pitch. He also whiffed almost every pitch. He pretty much could only hit the slow, straight ones, which Shintaro was quick to point out.
“Don’t worry about it pipsqueak. No one expected a little guy like you to be able to hit it past the mound anyway,” he snarked as Kazuya shuffled to the back of the line after another ball passed by him straight to the backstop.
Hiroshi nudged him on the shoulder. “You’ll get it, Kazuya-kun. Batting’s tough for almost everyone when they start.”
“Though not everyone makes a face like that when they miss,” Raiku snickered, picking up his helmet as he made his way up the line.
Kazuya laughed along. “Your face is one of a kind, too, Raikkun! I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen an oni mask like it.”
Yes, Kazuya laughed with them, but it hurt. If he kept missing pitches like this, he’d never make the cut. Not unless he became a master of everything else in baseball. No one would want a small guy who couldn’t hit in the batting lineup, even if he was good at throwing and catching. As his dad liked to say, “A client doesn’t care how good the steel is if you give them a bar when they need a plate”.
Granted, it wasn’t like he was the only kid on the team who struggled with batting. More than half of his teammates swung like they were dragging their bats through butter. Shintaro’s only contact for the day was a foul ball that ended up in the street. Hiroshi kept popping his balls so high that the coach who was pitching easily caught every one without breaking into a jog. Even Raiku, who was one of the better batters on the team, couldn’t hit anything into the outfield.
That didn’t stop Kazuya’s skin from itching after practice that day. His mind buzzed with the coaches’ instructions, replaying the feel of every missed swing, the clang of every bat that wasn’t his own connecting with the ball. He thought about the games he’d seen on TV while he cooked dinner, analyzing the way those batters stood in the box. He pulled out the baseball book Naya had given him to study while he ate his rice.
“There are many different styles of batting, but it’s much easier to hit when you can guess what kind of pitch you will face,” Kazuya read out loud with his mouth full of food. He frowned at the book. “But I already know what they’re throwing and I still can’t hit it!”
He angrily stuffed his cheeks, flipping through the pages to find something more useful. “Aha! Drills! That should help. Practice on a field…practice with a tee…oh, here, practice with just a bat! Take swings at the shoulders, waist, and knees to improve your speed and expand where you can comfortably make contact. Visualizing the pitch will help you focus your practice.” Kazuya drummed his chopsticks against the edge of his bowl. “So I just need to swing a lot?”
That was something he could do. He definitely had the time to sneak out for an hour to himself most nights before his dad came up from work. What he didn’t have was a bat.
Kazuya searched the room as he washed up after dinner, hoping to find an alternative. Broom? No, too long. Towel rod? No, too hard to remove. A handful of pencils from his bag? No, too small and light.
The clang of metal resonated from below, sending a crazy idea with it. He could borrow one of the hollow steel rods from his dad’s shop. It would have to be a short one, so it wasn’t too heavy, but at least it would let him swing something about the right thickness and weight. He just had to make sure he returned it when he snuck back into bed at night, so his dad wouldn’t notice. He didn’t like it when Kazuya dug around the steel shop on his own.
It would only be for a few weeks. Until tryouts, at most. He felt a little bad for not talking to his dad about it, but he was very busy this time of year. He’d be happier not having the stress of worrying about any of this baseball stuff until Kazuya had earned his place on the team.
Yeah, Kazuya would become a starter and then ask about real equipment. No use wasting their money if he couldn’t even do that much.
It became a weekly ritual for him. Sneak over to the scrap pile after school on Wednesdays when his dad worked the latest, make a quick dinner, then swing a pipe in the alley next door until the sun went down and the hum of machines from his dad’s shop quieted. Sometimes he’d bring the book out with him so he could look at the diagrams of different pitches while he swung. Other times he’d head in early, so he could watch videos of the pros on their computer. For weeks, Kazuya did nothing but think about baseball in his free time.
It paid off.
At practice, his batting steadily improved. Kazuya started to look forward to standing next to home plate. He still couldn’t hit as far as the bigger kids, and half his balls ended up in the dirt or popped sky high, but it was fun figuring out where a pitch was going to go and then feeling strain ripple up his arms as his bat made contact.
His throwing shoulder got better, too. Learning about pitches and grips helped Kazuya deliver the ball more consistently to the other players. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face when Shintaro snapped that he still didn’t know anything about pitching or Raiku glared at the ball Kazuya had placed right in his mitt with a thunderous crack.
Yes, baseball was fun. But something was still missing. Something he didn’t find until their first month of training was over.
“Alright boys, as you all know, today is tryouts. We’re going to have a practice game, so you each can show off the positions you most want to play,” the head coach informed the line of players in front of him.
They’d all gotten dressed up in their first-ever baseball uniforms for this occasion, cheap outfits that had been provided by the league. It was more a souvenir from their months of play than a real uniform. The limited-sized stock clothing looked ridiculous on many of the boys: Shintaro had his ankles sticking out, Raiku nearly burst through the chest, and Kazuya was swimming in his shirt and hat. Only Hiroshi, with his average build and height, looked like a proper baseball player in the league getup.
The head coach rapped his pen against his clipboard. “So, who wants to try their hand at pitching today?”
Half a dozen hands lifted, none of which were Kazuya’s. Shintaro and Raiku tried to shove each other’s arms out of the way. Hiroshi yelled at them to knock it off, while Naya, who had been able to convince her dad to let her see the tryouts, giggled on the sidelines.
“Everyone always wants the flashy job,” the coach sighed as he scribbled down names. His assistant chuckled, gesturing for the aspiring pitchers to lower their hands once everything had been recorded. “And what about catcher?”
Kazuya’s hand shot up even before the coach could explain why catchers were important. He rocked up on his toes while the other kids muttered about how uncool and boring it sounded.
Waving his arm at high as it would go, Kazuya shouted above them, “I want to! I want to play catcher!”
“You want to be a catcher ? Of course, you’d choose the weird position,” Shintaro grumbled.
His mocking was cut short by Naya, who was bouncing on the sidelines with excited claps. “It’s so cool you want to be a catcher, Kazuya-kun! You have to know so much about baseball to be good at it.”
“The ace is still cooler,” Raiku sniffed beside Kazuya.
“Well, if you’re the ace and Kazuya-kun’s the catcher, you could form a battery together,” Hiroshi pointed out. “That would be the coolest, don’t you think Naya-chan?”
She nodded emphatically, squeezing both her fists in front of her. “Yeah, that'd be awesome!" Slowly, her expression shifted to a delicate pout. "But what about you Hiroshi-kun? It wouldn't be nice for them to leave you behind.”
“I’m just happy to play. All I want is to enjoy baseball with my friends.” He shrugged, offering her a placating smile.
Raiku fake-gagged. “You’re such a sap, Hiro.”
“Are you boys done?”
All five of them fell silent, Naya included, but the coach didn’t wait for an answer before continuing, “Alright, Kazuya-kun, you’ll be one of our catchers. Who else wants to try it? Remember, the catcher is a very special position. As Naya-chan helpfully pointed out, they need to know the most about baseball out of anyone on the field. It’s really impressive to be able to play something so challenging.”
At the promise of bragging rights, a few more begrudging hands popped up. Some were the same kids who’d already said they wanted to play pitcher.
It took even longer to place all the other roles, but once the teams had been decided, they were finally allowed to grab their equipment. While many of the kids went into their backpacks for their bats and gloves, Kazuya followed the coaches over to the gear bins. They pulled out a catching set from the smaller sizes.
Among the new helmet and guards, there it was. What he’d been looking forward to for weeks. A catcher’s mitt.
Kazuya's smile eclipsed the midday sun overhead as he punched into the worn leather. It was everything he’d imagined, warm and snug on his hand. He felt like he could take on the world wearing that mitt. It didn’t matter who was pitching to him or who he was playing against, whether they were super annoying or dwarfed him in size, Kazuya knew he could find a way to win as long as he had this. All he had to do was outthink them at the plate and show off everything he’d learned.
Baseball was going to be fun.