My photographs of Tim Lincecum and Adrian Gonzalez were published on regional covers of the 2010 All-Star Game programs.

Many people know that I have been a baseball freak dating back to my childhood days growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I rooted for the Giants, hated the A’s, collected baseball cards and 7-11 baseball Slurpee trading cups, and fought with my sister. OK, I really didn’t fight with my older sister Paula much, but I did pull her hair on occasion when she would make fun of me, which seemed like a daily occurrence while growing up in Fremont.

Ever since I attended my first Giants game in 1973 I became hooked on baseball programs and team yearbooks. I loved reading about the ball players and memorizing the middle names of my favorite Giants. What other third graders at John G. Mattos Elementary School knew the full names of Garry Lee Maddox, Bobby Lee Bonds, and Gary Leah Thomasson? Besides reading the bios and pouring over the stats I loved looking at the color photographs of my heroes in action on the lime-green Astroturf at Candlestick Park. Back then no home games were televised in the Bay Area, so it was rare that I had the chance to see what my favorite players looked like in their glistening white home uniforms. Team photographer Dennis Desprois was an artist with his Nikons, and little did I know back then how much his beautiful photographs of Bobby Bonds, Ed Halicki, and John Montefusco would influence me.

The one that got away. I never acquired this 1975 All-Star Game program because I could not write fast enough when they put the address on the screen during the game in Milwaukee. This made me cry and it made my sister Paula laugh.

Pretty soon I branched out and tried to acquire my first All-Star Game program. The 1975 game was played in Milwaukee, and while watching the game on our Zenith color television with my sister they ran a commercial, a very short commercial, telling all of us viewers how we could own a keepsake from the Mid-Summer Classic by purchasing a copy of the All-Star Game program. All we had to do was send a small check to the address on the screen and we would get our own souvenir copy in six weeks. At age 10 I was not fast enough to copy all the information down and I choked under the pressure. The commercial ended and I was shit out of luck. I started to cry. My sister started to laugh. Not a good memory for me.

Being the resourceful honors student that I was I bounced back in 1976 with a nice plan of attack. The bicentennial All-Star Game was in Philadelphia and there was no way I was going to miss out in getting my hands on the official program from Veteran’s Stadium. I would outsmart the fast-talking salesman on TV. I had my cassette tape recorder with me in the family room near the television ready to get an audio recording of the address so I would not miss it. Sure enough, the commercial came on in the middle of the game and I was ready to get the magical P.O. Box that would deliver me my first All-Star Game program. After my successful plan I was able to enjoy the rest of the game, especially when Montefusco came into the game in his white cleats to throw two scoreless innings. How proud I was to see my favorite player look so good on the national stage!

My first All-Star Game program from the 1976 game in Philadephia.

I went on to collect every All-Star Game program since 1976 and I still have them, somewhere, in pages in binders in a box under my stairs. However, the recent programs have taken on a whole new meaning to me, since I became a contributing photographer to Major League Baseball Photos 16 years ago. Over the years I have had numerous photographs featured in the programs, but this year’s edition of the program was much more special for me. MLB recently started featuring local ballplayers on the cover of regional editions of the All-Star Game program to sell at ballparks around the country. This year my picture editor at MLB, Jessica Foster, selected a few of my pictures to be featured on the cover. I landed regional covers in San Francisco, San Diego and Arizona (see top). Not too bad for the kid from Fremont with the mean sister. These days she is much nicer to me, and I have stopped pulling her hair.

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!