Ace of Diamond Act II Season 2 Part 2

You can feel the season starting to grind. The recap at the top plus those repeated frames ate a chunk of match time that we needed for the actual baseball

That squeeze with Carlos sliding in and the whole Inashiro side erupting was the one moment where you forget to breathe. It felt like a punch to the gut and the crowd noise just swallowed everything

Shirakawa's monologue about being the team everyone wants to see fall carried the whole episode for me. That cold ruthless tone made Inashiro feel genuinely scary and not just a rival

Sawamura just sitting there watching Furuya deal and deciding the mound can wait. A season ago he would have been pacing and stewing. That quiet patience in the dugout is the biggest thing he has picked up

The wind trailing Narumiya's fastball looked so clean. You can see every rotation on it and the closeups of the battery actually hold up now. Whatever they changed in the pipeline worked

Maezono swinging at that first pitch and grounding out to third is the exact reason my blood pressure is a problem. Man has been in these spots a dozen times

Miyuki fouling off the cutter then the forkball then waiting for the changeup and STILL getting nothing but a shallow fly to third. Narumiya celebrating that out like he won the whole thing said everything about how scared he was of him

I could not stop smiling at Furuya breaking 156 out there with zero fear in his face. Strip away the number one jersey and he turns into a completely different animal. That release point and the way the ball exploded past Carlos was my favorite frame of the season so far

Narumiya bringing out that changeup right when Miyuki was sure he had it figured out hurt to watch. He fouled off everything else and then that ball just was not there. Best pitch of the whole episode

I was ready to scream at Kataoka for leaving Furuya in. My guy is throwing his arm into the ground and the walk to Carlos was the loudest alarm bell ever. Pull him already

Furuya is done and everybody in that stadium knows it. Watching the ace run out of gas while Sawamura sits there waiting is the quietest kind of painful

Aso slamming into that fence and still holding the ball is going to live in my head all week. He can barely stand and he's still acting grumpy about the fuss. That's the most Aso thing possible

Kuramochi's grandpa and mom at the station got me more than I expected. Small thing but it made the walk feel earned

I couldn't stop smiling when Kuramochi finally got that changeup. Years of that pitch eating him alive and he just fought it off. The third years are really out here growing on us one swing at a time

That ending shot of Riku's ball hanging in the air is cruel. You can't tell me Seido fans are supposed to just wait seven days on that