4 Chapter 4

Chris regularly gave me scrolls with exercises written on them. Every night, I'd go to his room and talk about the ins and outs of baseball with him.

Meanwhile I switched to four tyres while running and was thinking of switching to a truck's tyre.

After a week, it was time for Kantou tournament preliminaries to begin. Our first match was against Yokohama Kouhoku Institute and with only two innings left, we were down by four runs.

It was at that point that Kataoka decided to call for a change of pitchers.

[First half of the eighth inning, Seido pitcher change. The eighth inning substitute for Tanba is, Pitcher Sawamura! Pitcher Sawamura!]

Everyone in the opponent team was optimistic. Knowing that a first year was going to pitch, they thought that Seido was underestimating them. Little did they know, the immage of a mostrous pitcher would be indelibly engraved in their hearts.

All the opponent team could do was face the inevitable and wet their pants as they faced my pitches and struck out, one after another.

The crowd got so riled up by my pitches that they began chanting "Strike him out!" again and again.

Despite my pitching, we lost the match but the batting order put an amazing fight to the end.

Tanba was pitching well for the first six innings but the opponent team figured out how to tackle him by the seventh inning. It was something Kataoka had to ponder upon.

Over the weeks, Furuya and I managed to break Chris out of his character and warmed up to him. Furuya even made him catch his pitches and unlike with Miyuki in canon, Chris managed to tame Furuya's wild pitches.

Meanwhile, I began showing that I was not just a good pitcher. During every batting practice, I would send the ball into the out field or over the fence.

The second string kept having friendly matches with everyone trying their best to appeal to the head coach.

Furuya was a one of a kind pitcher but other than a select few, there wasn't a catcher who could catch his pitches.

The game against Kokushikan began with a terrible start. Ball after ball, Furuya was unable to pitch into the strike zone and the catcher couldn't catch his wild fastballs.

I remembered from canon that it was this match in which Chris decided to step in. I wasn't sure if he would, but, when all the bases got loaded and Furuya began getting frustrated, Chris asked to be subbed in as the catcher and the moment he did, Furuya soared into the sky like a hawk and hunted down the batters, one by one. It was spectacular.

The game went on as it did in canon. Only, there were a lot more strike outs. Kominato still managed to show his mettle as a batter and a fielder which got him promoted to the first string along with Furuya.

But, the most amazing was Chris himself. I got to watch him call the plays and change the momentum of the match just with his presence. I was inspired by him.

Despite his amazing genius at baseball, I knew it was the end of his high school baseball. His shoulder injury was most apparent.

Later that night, I was proven right when Kataoka decided to finalize the team that was going to play in the summer tournament.

It was the end of the summer for the rest of the third years.

Two whole years of countless hours spent practicing to hone their skills, all for the sake of becoming a regular.. The third years had no regrets left. Yet, it was painful. They just wished to play more baseball together.

(PLAYBALL!)

With Kominato and Furuya joining the first string, everyone's training increased in intensity.

Be it the third years in the first string who had one last chance of going to nationals, or the second years and us first years, everyone trained sheding their blood, sweat and tears with one final dream in mind.

To go to the natinals.

It was the beginning of the training week and everyone was practicing in the field.

Baseball isn't a one man sport and I once again reminded of the fact when I pitched in live practice, instead of at a wall.

My control over my fastballs was impeccable. But, despite of my observation haki, it dwindled when it came to the breaking balls, especially the variations and it was clear the Miyuki and Kataoka.

"Sawamura, your problem is that you have too many pitches. Having such variety is good, but, it's of no use to the team if they are not pitched well. Your control over your breaking balls, while good, needs improvement. For now, forget about skrew and splitter. I want you to focus on getting better at cutter for the duration of the camp."

"Yes!"

So, I pitched cutter most of the time in the situational practices. It wasn't much as despite of my asking, I wasn't allowed in the bullpen. Along with that, I did batting practice and showed incredible consistency in hitting in the out field and even over the fence.

The training was hellish. From dashes between poles to hundreds of laps of base running with the day ending with twenty laps of the ground. That  was just the beginning of the golden week.

(PLAYBALL!)

"The two first-year pitchers, how are they?" Kataoka asked the catchers after the grueling day of training.

"Their fatigue level must be reaching the peak soon, right?"

Chris nodded and replied, "Yes! As per your instructions, before they get used to the camp, they are not allowed to pitch in the bullpen and haven't been pitching even in situational practice ever since morning. It's almost time to slow down the pace and let them enter the bullpen, or to do pitching practice."

Kataoka nodded and said, "Hm, tell me about Tanba and Kawakami."

Miyauchi exhaled forcefully and said, "In good condition."

Kataoka grunted and said, "The road ahead is still long, don't train them too hard. Three practice matches will be held on the last Saturday and Sunday. Furuya and Sawamura will be pitching for the match on Saturday and the matches on Sunday will be pitched by Tanba and Kawakami. I don't care if we win or lose the matches. I just wanna see how they perform when they are fatigued. I want to see their fighting spirit."