December 1, 2018: Yanai —  The sound of a baseball hitting a bat cracks out, an anachronism in the winter air.  It comes in a staccato rhythm usually reserved for the chopping of wood.  Thwack … thwack … thwack … thwack. The field is open and flat, a high school playground surrounded by chain link and cement-driven poles.  The dugouts are cement block built as if from the bedrock of the earth itself.  On the field stand three men and a tall basket of baseballs.  The man with the bat reaches into the basket, tosses a ball into the air, and thwack!, sends another screaming ground ball out over the dirt.

Deep in the hole.

Up the middle.

One hopper, sizzling grounder.

Slow bouncer toward second.

They come in a steady stream of horsehide that are scooped up by one Shiro Adachi in a series of moves that are part ballet, part martial art.  Each ball is fielded in smooth stride, each is rocketed over to the third man, who stands in what seems like a perpetual stretch at first base.

“This is the lightning round,” Adachi will explain later.  Every ball is hit, and he stays on the field until every ball is caught and tossed properly to his first baseman.  A single miss causes an embarrassing reset. A single bobble, a single errant toss and every ball is retrieved and the whole thing starts again.

Thwack … Adachi glides to his right, plants his foot, nabs the ball back-handed and in a single wheeling motion has it flowing toward first.   Thwack … the next comes just as he takes his position, and Adachi is chasing up the middle, then twisting his body to get a proper throwing angle.  Thwack … again, and again.

He won’t say why he’s doing this added element to what is usually a more modest off-season work regimen.  He won’t let on that he’s seen the Gurabukin voting, and that his league-leading 3.0 Zone rating wasn’t enough to overcome the fact that he made 10 errors last season.  Shiro Adachi is a prideful man whose eyes light up when you mention he has been an All-Star the past two seasons, but a quiet one, and an honorable one.  He won’t say that he sees the voting totals except to note that the run-away winner for the best defensive shortstop in the Bright Blade Group is the Fushigi Yugi Celestial Warriors‘ Tadamichi Sato, a man who is “a very good shortstop and who deserves his own accolades.”

But you see it in the way Shiro Adachi approaches the Lightning Round.  Thwack … thwack, thawck … thwack.  You see that he knows Sato’s Zone Rating was a mere 2.1, but that Sato made only 6 errors.  And you see that he knows that number–raw mistakes made–speaks louder than any other number to most voters.

Adachi is 26 years old–no longer the dashing youngster who took Lupin fans by surprise and became one of the more recognizable players on the roster.  He is not old enough to be concerned about the near future, but still he hears the buzz created by 20 year-old Shigekazu Shimizu, the team’s #1 prospect who is still down in single A, but who people already talk about in those tones that were once reserved for Adachi himself.

“It’s not about the errors,” he will tell you later.  “And it’s not about the Gurabukin.  It’s about making the play.  It’s about being perfect.  Or as perfect as a man can be, anyway.  That’s all.”

And you believe him.

How could you not believe this of a man whose 3.0 ZR may well have led the league, but was still short of the +6 standard he set a year prior?  How could you not believe a man that knows where his ceiling is?  How could you not believe a man who comes to a ballpark that holds only three people in it in December, with the wind whirling, and the lightning striking–thwack, thwack, thwack–as if Adachi himself is calling it down like a conductor with a capon made of rawhide and leather.