It was a night brimming with anticipation. The Yankee prized young pitcher was slated to make his AA debut for the Trenton Thunder, and those in the know about his skills and potential were chomping at the bit to see it. Surely the game would be sold out to a raucous crowd anticipating the debut of 19 year old Philip Hughes, the first Yankee minor league hurler to get truly excited about in over a decade.

The train from Newark-Penn was packed with well-dressed businessmen making their way home, somehow oblivious to the magnitude of what was taking place not ten minutes from the Trenton train station. Hughes had been promoted over the past weekend, making the jump from high-A Tampa to the AA Thunder, because in Florida he had been absolutely dominant: thirty innings pitched, nineteen hits, thirty strikeouts, coupled with only two walks. Mix in the fact that he was one of the youngest players in the league, and the cause for excitement was obvious. Yet the only murmur on the train was the humming emitted by the wheels moving over the rails, punctuated occasionally by a suit mumbling nonsense into a cell phone. Hughes had a strikeout-to-walk ratio last year of five to one as an 18 year old in both low AND high A ball, and had improved on even those numbers so far this year. How could everyone on the train not be going to see him pitch?

After the ignorant white collars sauntered away upon reaching Trenton, the Thunder’s home, Waterfront Park, looked like a paradisiacal movie set. Bathed in sunlight, it warmly welcomed those fortunate enough to have had tickets for the night’s game. It was the perfect backdrop for the incredible story that would begin to unfold within the hour. Right outside the stadium a grade school band played music while packs of younger children wearing matching little league uniforms congregated to discuss who was going to catch the most foul balls. Surely they had no idea what they were about to witness. Inside the stadium the temperature was in the low seventies with little to no breeze, and the setting sun hurled impossibly long shadows across the emerald outfield. One of those shadows was created by a solitary figure standing in right, surrounded by nothing but perfectly manicured grass. His teammates were nowhere to be seen, save for one in catcher’s gear standing in foul territory roughly 80-100 feet away from him. All by himself, Phil Hughes repeatedly wound and threw off the flat ground in exaggerated manner, cracking the glove of his receiver. Little did anyone know that this placid scene would be a harbinger of what was to unfold in the following hours.

About 15 minutes before the first pitch, Hughes moved into the bullpen and began warming from the mound. His fastball sounded like a tire leaking air as it exploded into the catcher’s mitt, and there seemed to be a shift in the gravitational field of the earth about halfway to the plate when he threw his curve. His changeup would have made Bugs Bunny proud. After completing his warmups he slowly strode out of the pen and towards the home dugout, paralleling the rightfield line in fair territory the whole way. He was five feet from the stands, but no one seemed to notice that this prince of greatness was passing before them. A lone fan called out “good luck, Phil!” as he passed, but the supportive words seemed to fall on deaf ears as the young man strode purposefully towards the infield.

Right before the first pitch, a quick glance around the stadium revealed a plethora of empty seats. In addition to the missing Trenton fans, a large percentage of the crowd were of Hughes’ opponent, the Reading Phillies, whose parent club plays a stone’s throw away in Philadelphia. The relatively sparse attendance meant so many people would be missing their chance to see a young prodigy work his craft; an occurrence that almost every sports fan laments passing on later in life.

As the manchild with maturity beyond his years wound to deliver the game’s first pitch, the crowd remained remarkably silent. The pall was lifted less than a second after the ball left Hughes’ hand when a loud thud echoed around the stadium. It was a deep bass thud, the kind of thud that emanates when a baseball thrown with great force is met by an unmoving, padded object. Michael Bourn, the Reading leadoff hitter seemed a little taken aback by the pitch; he didn’t even react to it.

Superprospect Phil Hughes’ first pitch in AA had gone past the catcher and straight to the cushioned backstop. The young man with unerring control and complete command of his formidable arsenal had thrown a wild pitch on his very first windup. It wasn’t supposed to begin like this.

Bourn dug into the batter’s box again and battled Hughes, eventually hitting a solid groundball up the middle to the shortstop JT Stotts, who proceeded to knock it down, yet not get the handle in time to make a play on the speedy Bourn. In the blink of an eye, Bourn had swiped second base, and the prodigy had no outs and a man in scoring position, not yet five minutes into the game. Carlos Leon then hit a ball right back to Hughes that seemed harder than it actually was. He shot his glove up defensively, attempting to field the ball, but because it wasn’t as hard hit as he thought, he dropped it, tried to recover, fumbled it nervously, and then finally gave up on picking it up after Leon was safe at first. Suddenly the Next Big Thing was vulnerable and alone out there on the mound. After failing to make the play, he picked up the ball and stared into space as he slowly and disappointingly made his way back to the pitching rubber. It wasn’t supposed to begin like this.

So now the untouchable Phil Hughes had first and third, no one out, and the third hitter in the Reading lineup, John Castellano was at the plate. Castellano battled the phenom as the previous two batters had, fouling off pitches and taking balls that were demonstratively out of the strikezone. Hughes eventually got him to hit a tailor-made doubleplay ball to Stotts, who booted it, and was only able to get the force at second base. Fortunately Bourn had held at third, but the good providence was not for long. Dealing next to cleanup man Jim Rushford, Hughes threw a slider that took the same route that his first pitch of the game did. Bourn came home on the wild pitch, and one out into his debut at the next level, Philip Hughes was already trailing 1-0. It wasn’t supposed to begin like this.

Hughes’ own nerves and suddenly slippery fingers, in addition to those of some of his teammates, had thus far defeated his previously overwhelming talent. The kid, whose rapid ascension was the product of his impeccable command, had seemingly been tapped of its every last drop. As the sun set and the temperature dropped along with it, he continued to struggle with missing bats, making a lot of contact with the Phillies’ lumber in the instances when the ball wasn’t contacting the dirt first. When he did manage to win a battle and get a fielder to hit the ball fairly easily to an infielder, it was many times bobbled or simply dropped. By the time all traces of the sun had disappeared and clouds of gnats were being swatted at by annoyed spectators, it was the 6th inning and Hughes was walking his second batter of the game, equaling the total he had accumulated in his first five starts in Tampa. It wasn’t supposed to begin like this.

The future star of the New York Yankees pitching staff looked uncomfortable throughout his first outing at Trenton. He struggled with his location, gave up several frozen ropes to the batters, and had shoddy fielding as the crutch to assist him in getting out of jams. It was a solid showing, but not nearly the type that he is capable of, or will assuredly produce multiple times in the coming dog days of summer. His talent, makeup, and prior results are all to formidable to see this first start as anything other than a blip on the radar; a hiccup if you will. It wasn’t supposed to begin like this, but then again if we all know how the story is going to end, what does it matter how it began?