Woe be the baseball beat reporter, he of the extended road trips and endless hours and 162 game stories a season. That’s not even including spring training, practically a vacation-at-work for the tireless scribes. Try writing 162 times about a single team. Make that team particularly bad or good and the redundancies are almost inescapable.

This weekend featured the addition of seven plaques to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Tiger Woods’ former caddie mouthing off, awkward mixed martial arts stylings and NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski’s Willis Reed impression. It also featured baseball, as every summer weekend tends to.

When tasked with a game story, a writer tries to explain why this specific contest was different. It’s a task that becomes more difficult when the team you’re covering plays six times a week. Sundays often offer the best chance for a baseball writer to get in the groove, as day games help avoid deadline pressure. Presented here are five stories from Sunday’s baseball games that spun losses toward the big picture with precision and unique circumstance.