baseball
Little League 101
I did a piece on the Little League All-Star teams this past weekend (I had to file the story from the Falmouth Public Library and the photos from Wickford, RI, which made things, um, interesting)…nothing too in-depth, but it did take a lot of running around and pestering phone calls to make sure all four teams (9, 10, 11, and 12-year-olds) were represented in the article.
The whole process was made infinity times easier by the fact that I now have a CAR! I’m going to blog about this specifically sometime soon, as it truly warrants more attention. I can’t believe I have a car. It’s fantastic.
Anyway. These are all from practices; since the teams are by nature travel squads, all of their games are tournaments on the mainland, and I couldn’t get to any of them (darn it!) to take photos of actual competition…
Nothing like getting up to take a 7:45 boat off-Island for a tournament…
Sometimes I miss the days of non-Facebook birthday party invitations
Cape League IS Baseball
I have a Chatham A’s shirt with that slogan on the back. I’d say it’s pretty accurate- the Cape Cod Baseball League is a summer collegiate league, and it tends to attract some of the best talent in the country. About a third of the guys I saw play last Thursday had previously been in Omaha for the College World Series.
When they renovated the high school ballfield here six years ago, they made sure it was built to CCBL specifications, so that Cape League games could eventually be hosted on the Vineyard. For the past three years, they’ve recruited two teams to come over and play a day game (most games are at night). This year it was Falmouth and Hyannis (both of which are teams that are close to ferry ports. Makes the trip a little easier).
I saw the sign for the Cape League game when it was first posted a month ago at the high school and jumped all over that assignment when it came up at the news meeting. I wrote the article for it, too (all of the articles I write are in the subscriber-only area of the Gazette, so I can’t link to them), but was way more excited about getting to play with my other new lens, a 70-200 f/4.
The best part about Cape games, especially if you’re a little kid, is the accessibility to the players. In college parks, the players are in their dugouts the whole time, which are separated from the fans. In the CCBL, everything happens at recreational ballparks, so all that’s between the players and the fans is a chain-link fence. And because the league has such a reputation for producing future MLBers (David Aardsman, Lance Berkman, Jason Varitek, David DeJesus, Casey Blake, Ben Sheets, Jeff Kent, Tim Lincecum, Nick Swisher, Barry Zito, Ryan Theriot, to name a few), kids spend a lot of time getting autographs. You never know when you might end up with something signed by the next Nomar Garciaparra.
K is for Kauffman
I’m slowly working my way through all of the Major League Baseball ballparks in the country. So far I’ve been to a third of them*; I added my tenth last night when I went to see the Red Sox (my most favorite team ever) play Kansas City at the K. Having now been to both of the Missouri ballparks, I can confidently say that, while I love the roofdeck at Busch Stadium, I like the overall coziness of Kauffman much better. I think I also might have preferred the Cardinals’ old stadium to their current one.
Anyway, the game itself was excellent–it was a matchup of Zack Greinke and Josh Beckett, which is in itself fantastic. The game itself was pretty competitive for the first few innings, until the old guard of the Sox (Jason Varitek and Mike Lowell) decided they might as well make the most of their limitd playing time and hit some home runs. Once Greinke was taken out of the game, it was over for the Royals. A huge thank-you must go out to Laura Herring and her friends who were also at the game for not giving this Red Sox fan a hard time about her team loyalties!
We were in the nosebleed section, and my 70-300mm can only do so much from that range, but I tried to make a few photos anyway:
*I am doing much better in my parallel quest to go to all the NPB parks in Japan. I’ve been to six, with six more to go.
Zack Greinke. He was on my first and only fantasy baseball team five years ago.
Jacoby Ellsbury all alone in the outfield
There was a hot dog race. Ketchup won. He’s so jaunty!
People started leaving in the seventh. Boooo.
Laura’s boyfriend kept score the whole game.
I have NEVER seen the opposing team’s gear for sale in an MLB team store. They do that everywhere in Japan, but here it seems kind of weird.
Wide-open shutter…
Off the Mound
While Mizzou is on official spring break (it’s freakishly quiet in town now) and the Columbia Missourian newsroom is about a fifth of the population it normally is, I’m standing in as the department’s photo editor. I haven’t been in the newsroom at all this semester, and it was a little weird to get back into Missourian mode—but I didn’t forget the workflow process (that stuff gets deep inside your head), which is nice.
There’s only one other photographer working this week, so last night I picked up an assignment while she covered a Passover seder. I got to shoot my first college baseball game since spring of 2007, and it was excellent.
I’m usually pretty good about shooting pitching and batting, so I was trying to focus on baserunning and dugout photos. If there seem to be an excess of celebration photos, that’s because there was a serious excess of runs scored- Mizzou whomped Purdue 22-14.
I actually don’t think I’d like this more if you could see the players’ heads (the 300mm forced to me to compose creatively). Then it’d just be a picture of the backs of heads, which is boring. Discuss.
(21) People without People, springtime edition
Never mind the robins and the Punxsutawney predictions—today I got my first real sign that spring is on its way!
Why is there a baseball in the middle of the MKT underpass? I don’t know for sure, but I think I have a good idea.
It fell from the heavens as a sign to us all that spring—and baseball season!—is coming. I can’t wait. (-:
Down by the Bay: Baseball + Fireworks
I’m procrastinating writing a paper for Qualitative, and figured now was as good a time as any to post the penultimate entry from my San Francisco trip.
On Friday, July 3, I went with my family and my friend Seth to see the San Francisco Giants play the Houston Astros. I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore Astros fan, but I did go to school in Houston for four years, so I’d probably err on their side when picking an NL team to root for. However, the Astros of 2009 are nothing like the Astros of a few years ago–the team that went to the World Series and had the power trio (the Killer Bs) of Berkman, Biggio and Bagwell. They ended up losing 9-0. Ouch. To be fair, San Francisco’s pitcher was absolutely brilliant- and it was only his second start!
There was also a fireworks show after the game, which rocked. I’m already excited for the fireworks in Oak Bluffs next month, but that’s partially because I’m really excited about going back to the East Coast for a couple weeks.
Baseball hooray!
I’m trying really hard to actually post Missourian assignments…so here’s an enterprise photo from today. I was waiting around for Show-Me State bowling to start, and started to head back to the newsroom when I realized they were playing Show-Me State baseball at Hickman Field. Baseball, for the record, is way more fun to shoot than bowling is.
Right fielder Brennen Wood of the West Plains Zs connects with a pitch from Eliel Malpica, back left, of the North County Indians during the pool round of Show-Me State baseball, held July 18 at Hickman Field in Columbia. Despite Wood’s efforts, the Indians won 10-1.
Cactus League: Spring Break part two
I lived in Florida for eight years and never went to any spring training games. I didn’t really get into baseball until I was in high school, and we moved when I was thirteen, but still– I should have at least seen something of the Grapefruit League while I was down there. It’s kind of embarrassing. I’ve seen my dad play amateur ball (in the Roy Hobbs League) at City of Palms Park, where the Red Sox spring train, but never the Sox themselves. Admittedly, it’s a hell of a lot cooler to see your dad play than anybody else, but regardless, I totally dropped the ball on Florida baseball.
So now I’m trying to make up for that. My grandparents live in Scottsdale, AZ, and (again with the happy coinciding of dates) spring break nicely lines up with spring training, Cactus League style. Arizona baseball doesn’t have the history that Florida does (nor do the Red Sox play there, DAMN IT), but it does have the excellent advantage of all the ballparks being really close to each other and not sprawled out all over the state. Had I had the time and money, I would have seen more than two games, but two is still a huge breath of fresh air after the long baseball-less winter. The whole experience was made even better by my best friend Tegan being in Arizona at the same time (having just finished a stint with AmeriCorps)…so we got to go be baseball junkies together. Awesome!
I managed to recharge my camera battery at Tempe Camera (on the advice of Tegan’s boyfriend, who could hold up to any Mizzou photo-j in terms of camera gear know-how), so I was good to go and could telephoto to my heart’s content. One regret: not enough photos of Grady Sizemore.
[Game One: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Chicago White Sox at Camelback Ranch, Glendale, AZ. Russell Martin catching while Jim Thome bats. The White Sox won 6-1.]
[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Orlando Hudson at bat, AJ Pierzynski catching, Manny Ramirez on deck. YAY MANNY! I still love you; I just hate Scott Boras.]
[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Manny Ramirez breaking his bat before grounding into a double play with the bases loaded. Whoops.]
[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Paul Konerko covering first base.]
[Game Two. Cleveland Indians vs. Chicago Cubs at Hohokam Stadium, Mesa, AZ. This was a much better, more competitive game than the other, but the Indians were victorious, 7-5.]
[Indians vs. Cubs. Mark DeRosa (who just moved from the latter to the former) runs the bases in front of a sellout crowd after his second home run of the game. DeRosa was 3 for 4 with two homers and a double.]
[Indians vs. Cubs. Derrek Lee dwarfs Indians 1B Tony Graffanino. Because he’s REALLY TALL.]
[Tegan’s boyfriend Dan at the Indians/Cubbies game. Incidentally, he’s wearing the jersey (which he stole from Tegan) of the Chiba Lotte Marines, the Japanese team Bobby Valentine manages.]