Not the baseball gloves, of course.

The present and past have been like two roads in Mix, almost parallel but not quite.  Slowly and deliberately they’re converging, but this was really the first episode where they’ve intersected.  I mean fully intersected, as in “there’s no mistaking where this is going.”  What we don’t know of course is when they’ll intersect next, or how often.  And indeed, how long they run until we reach the final destination – Adachi is still writing after all, and this adaptation won’t even cover all of what’s already on paper.

The next opponent on tap for Meisei is Sankou High School, but even though there’s history there, the schools very much on the mind are Toushu and Seinan.  With the Nishimura combo Seinan looms large (plenty of history there, too) and Toushu is the current top seed in the East Tokyo tournament.  They also loom in the next round, where Seinan can only await if Meisei makes the finals.  That’s why Ooyama-kantoku sends Souichirou and Haruka to scout Toushu.  They end up missing all but the last out thanks to the mercy rule, but it’s still educational.  For us, anyway.

Do opposites really attract?  Souichirou had better hope so, because he and Haruka are oil and water in their first extended alone time.  Indeed she seems a lot more compatible with Touma (and may have certain feelings).  But that’s complicated for any number of reasons.  Nan-chan is nevertheless none too happy about Ooyama’s decision to pair the catcher and the manager off, though perhaps a bit relieved to see them sniping (and hosing) at each other.

As for Sankou, they’re an old friend – a foil for the ’86 team that went all the way.  And they have the same coach, though both his legs and memory have gotten wobbly.  Nevertheless this is “the best team he’s put together in years” – we know because both coaches tell us.  And Touma is wobbly too right out of the gate, walking and hitting batters with abandon.  Perhaps his shoulder feels a little too loose, and it’s certainly getting on Souichirou’s nerves, but Touma still manages to right the ship every time the waters get choppy.

This is where Adachi raises the stakes in a big way by addressing the elephant in the room head-on for the first time.  He does this through the old coach, who sees something vaguely familiar in Touma.  As convinced as he is that his Sankou teams have never been no-hit, there was one time – and when the realization hits, it’s the only thing on the Sankou side that does.  I’m not even sure we’ve seen the name “Uesugi” referred to in Mix yet, but to anyone with a long memory it wasn’t even needed to connect the dots.  Just why does Touma resemble that old pitcher quite as much as he does (Adachi same-face jokes aside) – that’s the question for the moment, it seems to me.