Chapter 124

Short Summary
Tokuchi explains his plans to Kojima, and the coming problems the Lycaons are going to face.

Long Summary
This is the first time in Japanese baseball an active player has become the owner of a team. The Lycaons all cheer that they’re saved.

Tokuchi gives Kojima an explanation of his plan while he drives. He says that four months ago, when he lost the bet to Kojima, he thought about what needed to be done to make the Lycaons victorious. By far the worst problem they had was the ‘shitty manager’. Kojima looks confused and Tokuchi seems surprised he hadn’t noticed. Saikawa was planning on selling off the Lycaons before the season had even started. Saikawa needed to have the team generate a certain amount of profit this season to maximise their selling price. Kojima looks shocked. He’d thought the stagnation of the team was due to dismissal of players, which couldn’t be avoided because the Lycaons were at the bottom of the rankings. He now realises it was done to increase the team’s sale price. Saikawa Group had plans in place to make sure the team wouldn’t get any stronger, so Tokuchi decided that he’d need to take out the whole company. For that reason, he proposed the One Outs contract to Saikawa.

Meanwhile, Mitamura is watching a news report featuring the Lycaons and their new ownership. He angrily turns it off and says, ‘Tokuchi, don’t think it’ll end like this.’

Kojima calls the contract with Saikawa very risky as he must have had some trick prepared. Tokuchi responds he suspected there would be traps, which is why he teamed up with Tronpos. He provided them information and they provided him money. Tokuchi had intended on letting Tronpos buy and manage the team, but one day Mitamura confessed to him he planned to get rid of the Lycaons at the Pro baseball team sell-off, and Tokuchi had to change his strategy.

In his office, Mitamura picks up the phone and makes a call to Chairman Tanabe.

Tokuchi reveals he never thought of Tronpos as a partner, but they foolishly thought he was on their side and leaked to him their buying price for the Lycaons. Thus Tokuchi managed to outbid them. Kojima says he understands what he did and how it ultimately saved them. Tokuchi says now the ‘real problems’ will start, and a force more powerful than Tronpos is working against them. Japanese baseball is heading towards a single-league format.

The S-League was formed in a such way that allowed one owner to take power over the other owners, effectively making them his ‘dogs’. Those who didn’t agree with this system formed the P-League, which is what the Lycaons play in. The S-league ended up the more successful enterprise, making the P-league owners want to switch sides; thus even the P-league owners are ‘dogs’ for the S-league’s power-holder.

The S-League ‘dogs’ started feeling antipathy towards the power-holder so, sensing their waning loyalty, he started working towards merging the two leagues. The problem with the power-holder’s plan is the Lycaons- they’re the only P-league team not in debt. So long as they serve as a model case, corporate effort might not be enough to force the merge. While they’re successful, the power-holder can’t use the excuse he’s trying to ‘save’ everyone from debt. He came up with an idea to use his friendship with Mitamura to obtain the Lycaons, but Tokuchi has now prevented that from happening. Tokuchi reveals the power-holder to be the owner of the Galalians, Chairman Tanabe Tsuneyuki.

Mitamura’s call goes through and he apologises to Chairman Tanabe for Tokuchi’s interference. Tanabe tells him not to worry, as he’ll be holding an Owners meeting in which they’ll unanimously vote not to allow Tokuchi to be an Owner. He says he’ll teach that ‘mere player’ that he has no place in his sacred baseball world.

Characters

 * Tokuchi Toua
 * Kojima
 * Chairman Tanabe
 * Mitamura