Is this an appropriate lede for a high school baseball story?

For a bylined game story on a playoff game involving the only school you cover? Why would you even bother to go? If four grafs is all you get, then stay in the office and take a call on it. And if four grafs is all the space I get to write about a game such as this, I damn sure am not leading with the star player's failure.

 

In a 9-8 game, in a sport where the best hitters have a 70 percent failure rate, a guy flying out with the bases loaded is the lead?

Had he been 15-for-15 with the bases loaded all season?

All the other things that happened in a 9-8 game became insignificant because this kid didn't deliver a hit?

Dumb. Really dumb.

 

There are much more imaginative ways to get to the last out without slapping this kid's name right there at the top. In fact this situation offers a chance at some perfect pacing in laying out the scenario. But do something like once you've laid it out....but Mr. All-Star, who already had three hits, instead flew out, ending the game, the win streak and the season.
"Man, the ball looked like a pumpkin all day but that last one? I just missed the sweet spot on the bat," All-Star said. "I knew as soon as I hit it that it wasn't going deep enough.
"Kind of hard to believe that high school baseball is over."

(of course, good luck getting that quote )

 

I was gonna say ... you're more likely to get, "I was just tryin' to do my bes' and help the team."

 

So in the poem Casey at the Bat, was the strikeout in the lede? I think not!

 

I will say, the last out isn't always the key moment of a baseball game, even games decided by narrow margins. Without knowing how this game went, it's difficult to say.

But it's not a slam-dunk that you have to lead with a game-ending flyout.

 

I doubt the final out of the game was the big play of this game. There weer 17 runs scored. At what point did the out of town team score the go-ahead run? How did the team score it? That seems to me to be the lede of the story. The best player on the team popping up with the bases loaded to end the game seems like something that should be left for the middle or end of the story.

 

Hey OP, why don't you just post the darn thing so we can know what the heck we're debating? Otherwise it's really pointless. Be like me asking total strangers: "Do you think if I baked a chocolate cake it would taste good?"

 

No. No it would not.

 

How about a baked chicken?

 

Your second graf pins this loss on this kid WAY more than the AP-style lede you decried does.

 

I'm more concerned with that 59-word lead. Yikes.