Chapter 23

Short Summary
The Mariners do their best to force Tokuchi to run in an attempt to wear out his stamina.

Long Summary
At the beginning of the second game between the Lycaons and Mariners, Takami tells Kojima he understands why he was willing to get injured just to have Tokuchi on the team. He compliments Tokuchi for his ‘toughness’ in managing to pitch so well with only one day’s rest, but says he has a ‘glaring weakness’ that will deprive him of all stamina. He tells him the Mariner’s objective today is to ‘crush Tokuchi’ and leaves.

Kojima tells his teammates what Takami said, but Ideguchi is convinced he’s bluffing. Another teammate points out that nearly all the Mariners’ starting lineup are left-handed batters. As Tokuchi is right-handed, lefty batters will have a natural edge.

The first three batters all hit grounders. Kojima asks Ideguchi how Tokuchi’s doing, and he tells him he’s fine. Ideguchi comments that One Outs is different from baseball because it’s designed to favour ground hits over outfield flys. While an outfield fly would automatically put a batter out in baseball, this does not apply in One Outs, meaning One Outs pitchers would prefer to make their opponents hit grounders. This is exactly Tokuchi’s play style, and it allows him to conserve energy since grounders require only one pitch to be thrown, while a strike-out would need three. Ideguchi guesses the Mariner’s plan must be to make Tokuchi waste as many pitches as possible, though Kojima is silently sceptical their plan would be that simple.

Takami bats next. Tokuchi pitches and he suddenly changes to a bunting stance, but the ball was thrown to the outside. Ideguchi calls a time out to tell Tokuchi about the plan to deplete his stamina and warns him to avoid throwing extra pitches.

Takami attempts two more bunts, fouling on both before finally getting out. At the bottom of the fourth, neither team has scored any points and Tokuchi has managed even more grounders than usual.

In the fifth inning, Takami gets his first hit off Tokuchi. Kojima tries to tell Mihara Tokuchi must be tired but Mihara insists it’s coincidence. Tokuchi gets the rest of the batters out, though he clearly seems fatigued. Kojima asks Mihara about putting the bullpen on standby but he responds there’s no point replacing Tokuchi when he’s doing fine.

By the end of the 7th inning, Tokuchi has given up a further nine hits, but no runs. During the 8th, he falls over while running to cover first base. Kojima finally understands what Takami meant earlier. Unlike One Outs, the pitcher is ‘just another infielder’ in baseball. Of Tokuchi’s 23 outs this game, 21 have been grounders, and 20 of those travelled to first base. When the ball flies to the right of the first baseman, the pitcher has to sprint to cover first base while the baseman chases the ball (a distance of roughly 20 metres). The failed bunting attempts and use of left-handed batters were done to make Tokuchi run as much as possible.

At the Mariner’s dugout, Takami says he came up with this idea when he saw how tired Tokuchi looked during the Eagles game, when they used an eight-player infield and Tokuchi was forced to cover a lot of ground. While he has great pitching stamina, there was never any need to run during One Outs.

Tokuchi strikes out Tomas, making three outs. The Lycaons come on determined to score a run for Tokuchi’s sake, but still manage to score nothing.

The stalemate continues and the game eventually enters extra innings. One of Tokuchi’s pitches gets hit and the outfielder hurts himself in order to make a spectacular catch. Kojima hopes Tokuchi understands that the biggest difference between One Outs and baseball is he’s not alone. He tells Mihara to put him on as a pinch hitter.

Characters

 * Tokuchi Toua
 * Manager Mihara
 * Kojima
 * Ideguchi
 * Imai
 * Takami
 * Tomas