Chapter 802 76: League Invitation, Derby Crowning (Part 3)

In the final round, to crank up the unpredictability, there's only 2 minutes or 27 pitches worth of leeway. If the two players end up tied, it goes to a tiebreaker: each gets three outs, and whoever hits more home runs wins; if you hit a homer over 425 feet, you earn an extra out.

In fact, compared to facing Major League Level pitchers in real games, the Home Run Derby isn't nearly as easy as people think. Besides the hitter's own swing mechanics and raw power, having the right batting-practice pitcher is also a key factor—the BP pitcher has to keep pounding the hitter's sweet spot consistently, and still be able to adjust on the fly to the hitter's rhythm and fatigue.

Precisely because of that, to make sure he could lock down the Home Run Derby title, Lin Guanglai specifically called in his already-retired former teammate C.C. Sabathia to pitch for him today.

"Old man, you've been retired this long, you still got any feel left in that arm? The contest's about to officially start, don't you drag me down out there…" The moment he saw the big fella, Guanglai slipped right back into their usual bantering mode. No matter how much he missed their days as teammates, he wasn't about to ease up with the trash talk.

By the time Lin Guanglai took the stage, the first seven hitters had already finished their opening rounds: based on the current standings, Guanglai needed at least 19 home runs to advance to the second round, or he'd be knocked out.

Considering that today's pre-tournament favorites Pete Alonso and Gunnar Henderson had already been eliminated, Guanglai's fans couldn't help breaking into a cold sweat for their idol; but on the very first pitch of his official round, Guanglai used his performance to wipe away all their worries.

Sabathia gave his arm a casual flick and floated a 60–70 mph heater right into the inner-middle sweet spot of the zone. Guanglai, fully locked in, just gave the bat an easy-looking swing and launched the ball clear up to the third deck at Global Life Field.

Amid the crowd's roars and shrieks, the Statcast system instantly pushed the data for that blast out to every broadcast feed: it was a monster shot of 487 feet!

Opening his Home Run Derby debut in that kind of style, and with Sabathia fully locked in and feeding him, Guanglai quickly flipped the switch into the same "slicing melons and chopping veggies" mode he'd been in all season:

Batting last in the first round, he needed only 30 swings to secure a ticket to the next stage, cruising his way to a top-two seed;

In the second round, facing a red-hot Teoscar Hernández, the two were tied at the end of regulation; in the tiebreaker with only three outs to work with, Guanglai first crushed a 446-foot shot to pad his margin for error, then walked it off at the very last moment of the extra period;

In the final, facing the surging young gun Bobby Witt Jr., a fully unleashed Lin Guanglai gave the rookie a true taste of what MVP-level dominance looks like:

Out of his 27-pitch allotment, he hammered an absurd 21 home runs, more than half of them traveling over 425 feet, and one of them was a near-moonshot that almost left the entire ballpark;

His opponent Bobby Witt Jr. also put on a great show, going deep 14 times in his 27 swings, but in the end he still came up just short.

Afterward, when Lin Guanglai lifted the Home Run Derby trophy in front of tens of thousands of fans, the reporters swarmed him immediately. When asked what his next goal was now that he'd claimed this title, Guanglai finally voiced what had been in his heart:

"With this Home Run Derby championship as the marker, I've just completed a near-perfect first half of the season. Now, let's set our sights a little farther ahead—"

"Let's reach up and touch the ceiling of history together!"

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