The chapter opens on a field with a single-plate buried in the dirt. It's pitch one, and it's from a middle-schooler named Azeuma San. The narrator tells us that he's not a fan of middle school kids pitching on the team's field. He wants to make sure that the other team doesn't hear about it, so he suggests that they throw the best pitch they have at the beginning of the game. He's got a lot to say about that, but first he wants to talk about the pitch that he just saw. It was a strike, and the narrator says that he can't believe that the guy could even hit it that far out to the right-field line. He also says that the dude thinks of the team as a "low-level opponent" , so they need to attack his weak spots. First off, the narrator points out that the last pitch he saw in the game was probably just one of the best pitches he'd ever seen. He says that it was probably meant to release his true potential by making up for the lack of skills in the other players. He then goes on to say that the team has a lot of experienced players on it, and that they're going to have to compete with them all the time. He concludes that he wanted to humble the guy before he went to the big leagues.