Chapter 141

Short Summary
Tokuchi reveals to Kojima that Brooklyn's quote was a lie he told the press. The Mariners send out a replacement pitcher for Kawanaka.

Long Summary
Kojima’s home run cuts the lead down to 4. Kojima says he was lucky he got a careless pitch off Kawanaka and thinks it unlike him to lose concentration during a game. Tokuchi laughs and says he drove in a ‘lynchpin’ to work ‘fissures’ into the Mariners.

The Mariners’ pitching coach approaches Kawanaka and tells him to get it together and ‘put some spirit’ in there.

Kojima asks Tokuchi what he means about fissures. Tokuchi responds that the Mariners are a warped team that have always put too much emphasis on batting. Their batting percentage has been first in the league for five years, but their defence percentage has remained unimpressive. Having always made it to the championships despite this, the Mariners batters came to think they’re more important than the pitchers, putting the two at odds within the team. With the big trade, the original team feel that the new players aren’t advantageous additions but ‘position-stealing interlopers’.

Tokuchi admits that Brooklyn referring to the Lycaons team as 'nothing' was something he'd made up. He can’t lipread someone in a video when they're sitting on a bench far away from the camera. He admits he also lied to Kawanaka when he'd told him Brooklyn had called him a nuisance. He thinks this successfully irritated Kawanaka and further jarred the relationship between the Mariners and the newcomers.

Kawanaka leaves the mound, walking away from the coach. He lies and says he heard his shoulder make a bad sound during the last pitch so they should send on someone else. Kawanaka sits at the bench, annoyed- the league’s ‘strongest batting lineup’ could barely get any points off the Lycaons B-level pitchers, yet the coach felt the need to give Kawanaka an insensitive pep talk after he’d pitched an almost perfect game.

Ideguchi isn’t looking forward to batting against Kawanaka’s replacement, Mizuhashi, though Tokuchi seems sceptical that’s who they’ll send out. At the Mariners’ dugout, Mizuhashi asks the manager if he can go on as he’s pitched in these types of circumstances before. Manager Imawano scoffs and tells him that might be useful in the Eagles, but not the Mariners. He sends out one of their original pitchers, Tashiro.

Ideguchi looks shocked. The only reason Imawano sent out Tashiro was pride. Sugadaira asks Tokuchi if they’d still receive MVP tickets if they won this game. Tokuchi says of course they will, but it's a 4-point difference in the ninth inning and they’ll never catch up.

This of course makes each Lycaons batter determined to be the player who turns the game around. They each get hit after hit, and a run from Sugadaira finally equalises the score.

Characters

 * Tokuchi Toua
 * Kojima
 * Kawanaka
 * Manage Imawano
 * Ideguchi
 * Mizuhashi
 * Tashiro