The Finest Baseball Game Recap You'll Read This Year

I've written over a thousand game recaps in my 11 years following the Yankees at Bronx Banter. It can be a tedious and dull writing assignment and I struggle to keep the posts fresh. But every so often you'll get a piece on deadline inspiration like the one my man Jon DeRosa delivered last night:

“Get me Hughes,” said the Captain.

“Is Hughes the right guy for this Cappy?” asked the Lieutenant.

“Of course not,” said the Captain and he slammed the door leaving the Lieutenant on the other side with his stupid questions.

The newspaper pressed the headline before the clerk opened the case file. The crime scene was so fresh it didn’t even stink yet. Two patrolmen waited for a detective to arrive. They stretched yellow tape around the perimeter and snuck glances at the mess inside, hoping they wouldn’t shudder and diappointing themselves when they did.

The city disgorged a heavy case load that week. All over town, things were falling apart and each detective paired up a new crime until all the dance cards were full. Well, all except for Hughes. Hughes had once been a hot-shit-detective, advancing through the academy with unprecedented talent – the test scores and the muscle to back them up. Now he was just hot-shit.

Last summer he wrote a memorable game story with this riff on Salinger.