Andy Marte #25 (left), Niuman Romero #4 and Carlos Carrasco #59 of the Cleveland Indians joke around in the dugout before the game against the Oakland Athletics at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on September 20, 2009 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

The best part of shooting Major League Baseball games for me during the 2009 season was spending time before the games shooting candid photographs of players getting ready for the game in the dugout with a wide angle lens. Over the years I ave always shot pre-game, either batting practice or guys by the bat rack, but always with a long lens- my 400mm. This is great for clean head shots, but I thought it would be more fun to go right inside the dugouts (usually the visiting side) and see what I could get before games in Oakland and San Francisco.

Miguel Cabrera #24 and coach Andy Van Slyke #18 of the Detroit Tigers joke around in the dugout before the game against the Oakland Athletics at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

Each team is different before the game and each club gives off a different vibe. Most of the teams seemed to enjoy being photographed and many of them hammed it up for my camera (Canon Mark III with a 16-35 zoom). Some of the best clubs to shoot this year included the Angels, Rangers, Tigers, Twins, Royals and Indians. Often times I found myself so excited after shooting in the dugout that I did not care about the game! The best part of every game was getting home to edit the take. The funnest stuff to look at was always the pre-game in the dugout.

Andruw Jones of the Texas Rangers sits in the dugout before the game against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park in San Francisco, California on Saturday, June 20, 2009. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

I continued to shoot this stuff all season and my editors loved it. Both my editor at Sports Illustrated Nate Gordon and my editor at Major League Baseball Jessica Foster were very encouraging all season about my work. I was just hoping that some day some of these images would actually be published! My dreams were finally realized this week when the annual League Championship Series program was published by Major League Baseball for the LCS games between the Yankees and Angles and the Dodgers and Phillies. This year’s LCS program contains a photo essay entitled “Scenes From The Dugout” which includes five of my photographs, all of which are presented here.

Bat boy Darren Baker #12 of the Cincinnati Reds eats sunflower seeds in the dugout before the game against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park on August 8, 2009 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

Each year as a contributing photographer to MLB Photos I submit my favorite photographs of the season for consideration to be published in end of the season photo essays that they publish in the LCS and World Series programs. They usually run a nice assortment of action pictures and it is always fun to get something published in the essay, but they have never done anything different like publish these dugout images.

Alberto Callaspo #13 and Yuniesky Betancourt #3 of the Kansas City Royals joke around in the dugout before the game against the Oakland Athletics at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on September 2, 2009 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

Luckily for me they decided to do something cool this year, thanks to our new photo editor Jessica. Jessica has taken a very strong editing role this year with our publications department and has worked really well with the art department. The results- especially in this case- have been terrific. Especially for me! I just got my hands on these PDF files and have not seen the program in person. I can’t wait to see it soon! Of course any of you out there can see the photo essay immediately by picking up a program this week in Anaheim, Philadelphia, Los Angeles (maybe) or New York (maybe).

Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants bats against Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee during the game at AT&T Park on July 31, 2009 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

Sometimes you can plan for the perfect photograph and spend weeks trying to get everything all lined up, only to have the light be bad, the player not cooperate, stadium security get in the way, or the star player you are shooting go into a slump. There are other times when things work out way too easily with last-minute planning and a nice idea from a photo editor. One game. Four at bats. And $30.00 to park.

The San Francisco Giants put together a surprisingly good season in 2009 and Sports Illustrated decided to do a feature on their best hitter Pablo Sandoval. Pablo is a switch hitter who will swing at any pitch from his head to his toes. This makes if difficult sometime to get a real nice batting picture of him. This story was closing pretty quick and the magazine did not have an opener yet (a photograph to be printed across two pages to open the story with). Due to the tight deadline my baseball picture editor Nate Gordon needed me to shoot Pablo in action on a Friday night against the Phillies at AT&T Park. Nate told me the editors back in New York were looking for a wide horizontal shot with the batter on the left and the pitcher on the right with losts of sky to drop in type. “It would be great if you could get the ball in the sky,” said Nate.

The big problem for me was that I was already assigned to shoot Oakland Raider training camp that day in Napa and I would not be done till after 5pm. We figured I could rush to San Francisco in bad commute traffic and just barely get to the park for the first pitch. Just like we thought I rolled near the ballpark at 7:05pm for a 7:15pm first pitch. It could never get into the media lot this late, so I parked in the super expensive underground lot right across the street from the park for $30.00. Man was that convenient!

This is what Sandoval's first at bat looked like with the white sky. This would not have worked out too well as the ball would not have shown up in the sky. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

The perfect spot to shoot this picture from- and the ONLY spot was in the Lexus Field Club section just to the first base side of home plate in the front row, shooting through the backstop netting. Luckily the ushers and fans were super cool and I went back to the same spot for each at bat. Going into the game in Late July I knew that the first at bat would have a white sky, the second at bat would have a dark blue sky and the final two at bats would have a black sky. I really needed a good swing with the ball in the sky when it was not white. Luckily Pablo hit a fly ball to center field in his second at bat with the pretty dark blue sky and the editors did a real nice job of making the image work as the opener for the story. Sometimes shooting wide is really the way to go- especially when you have a chance to work with great editors!