فصل 1

Bonda Natsunosuke is an 18 million yen-a-year middle relief pitcher for the Jingu Spiders. Highly conscious of his limited time in the sport and obsessed with earning enough for retirement, Bonda faces a number of tricky situations which could help or hurt his bottom line.

Bonda's coach has noticed a fatal flaw in his pitching style: He can only strike out players who make less money than he does! Later, Bonda attempts to help his best friend, a Spiders starting pitcher, earn his first win of the season.

Tokunaga decides to set a quota for his friends from Yamanashi Prefecture: within the next four games, Ohno needs to hit four home runs, and Bonda needs to get his ERA under 3. Can the two meet the difficult challenge and get their futures back on track?

Bonda must deal with a rematch against 41-year-old superstar Doterai, whom Bonda took out of the game the year before with a hit-by-pitch. Later, he gains an admirer when practicing soccer moves outside of the stadium.

A manga artist visits the stadium, hoping to use Bonda's life as reference for a baseball manga. However, when Bonda receives the magazine containing the artist's new work, he discovers that the artist has played it "safe."

While out on the town one night, Bonda runs into Sekiya, a hard-partying player who makes ten times Bonda's own salary. After refusing the man's hospitality, will he be able to strike him out the next day?

Tohko, a 32-year-old catcher who spends most of his time in the minors, is brought up briefly to the majors. His old friend from college wants him to give up his mediocre baseball career for a steady job, but Tohko refuses. Then, the next day, when he's in the battery with Bonda...

Japanese pro baseball's strict foreign player quotas has been keeping left-handed pitcher Thomas in the minors, and now he's afraid of getting bumped. On a day when he's brought up to pitch in a major league game, Bonda decides to guide him to the stadium, and advises him in every way he can to make sure he pitches well.

Batting practice pitcher and scorer Kuriki gives Natsunosuke advice about how to improve his pitch speed. While fearing that a focus on speed could backfire and jeopardize his career, Bonda reluctantly takes his old mentor's advice...

Natsunosuke hates Koshien Stadium, which physically shakes from the force of the Osaka Tempters' cheer squad. When he's brought to the mound, he immediately ends up in a tight spot, with no outs and bases loaded. As two of the Tempters' most promising young players come up to the plate, how will Natsunosuke fight back?

"Delinquent King" Haratake is a popular middle relief pitcher for the Setouchi Carnabeats known for taking forever between pitches. Natsunosuke is a big fan of his, and looks up to him as a friend and mentor. But when they're both brought in as relief pitchers in the same game, they end up facing each other across the plate!

Natsunosuke has a crush on Yuki-chan, the part-timer at his favorite diner. She doesn't know he's a baseball player, and hardly ever notices him at all... that is, until she comes a game at Jingu stadium, when it turns out she's a Tempters fan!