Assignment: Joe Mauer

Posted on September 29, 2009

Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins bats during the game against the Oakland Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California on Thursday, June 11, 2009. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

 

One of my favorite kind of assignments to get is to cover one player for an entire game. Many times I will get a call from my baseball photo editor Nate at Sports Illustrated asking me to shoot one player for an upcoming story. In June of this season I got the call to work on a story about the Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer. Mauer was having a career year at the plate and flirting with hitting .400 when the Twins rolled into Oakland for a mid-week series that concluded with one of our usual wonderful Bay Area weekday afternoon games at the Oakland Coliseum. My assignment was to shoot everything Mauer did. Batting pictures can be pretty standard, so we were really hoping to get a nice defensive picture of him. As usual I got there around three hours early to shoot batting practice, but as is the case many times on getaway day there was no BP, so I waited around and had lunch with friends until the players came out around 30 minutes before the 12:35pm first pitch.

After Mauer warmed up the starting pitcher in the bullpen he was in a great mood when he came back to the dugout and I was able to get some nice candid moments of him showcasing his great smile. Having him in his catcher’s gear was an added bonus. Once the game started all I did was concentrate on Mauer. I had to be sure and shoot all of his at bats from as many different angles as possible, and when the A’s were at bat I had to keep my camera aimed at him at all times so I could capture him making a defensive play as he chased a bunt, foul ball or wild pitch.

Being a baseball freak understanding the nuances of the game come in handy for me sometimes and this knowledge really helped out on this assignment. The A’s had many right handed batters in their lineup, and right handed hitters tend to hit foul balls to the first base side. Knowing this I was especially prepared to really concentrate on Mauer when a right handed hitter was in the batter’s box. If I could not get a picture of Mauer blocking the plate I at least needed to have a defensive action picture of him showing his face. Late in the game someone hit a foul ball to the right side and I was all over Mauer as he ripped off his mask, made a great face, and chased the ball. It didn’t matter that he did not catch the ball. I had my picture- in fact I had an amazing sequence of pictures!

I was happy when the magazine ran the picture above of Mauer ripping off his mask as a full page in the magazine. The fun piece of mail I received a week later made it even more special. I got an envelope in my mailbox from the Budapest Marriott. I wondered who in the heck would send me mail from Budapest? In the envelope was a real nice note that said:

Brad- Nice shot of Mauer- I always loved shooting catchers. I had a guy who looked like Howdy Doody- Johnny Bench. T.T.

Holy cow. The note was from my friend and sports photography legend Tony Tomsic! Tony is one of the all time greats. He is one of four living photographers to have photographed EVERY Super Bowl. I was so glad that Tony liked my picture and also glad that he liked shooting catchers.

So do I Tony!