Miguel Cabrera for Sports Illustrated

Posted on July 19, 2010

Miguel Cabrera and Magglio Ordonez of the Detroit Tigers get ready in the dugout before the game against the Oakland Athletics at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on May 20, 2010 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

 

Every time I go to the ballpark to photograph a baseball game I have a different objective. Sometimes I am shooting stock images of everyone who plays. There are days when I am shooting from a different angle just trying to get a special picture. Then there are the days when I have a specific assignment to photograph one player for an upcoming story. This was the case recently when I was assigned by Sports Illustrated to shoot Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera when the Tigers were in Oakland to play a day game against the Oakland A’s at the Oakland Coliseum.

I love it when I go the ballpark with the tunnel vision of photographing one player. It is so much fun to concentrate on one guy and shoot everything he does. I always get to the park early on a day like this, trying to arrive around three hours before the game so I do not miss batting practice. Once I shoot batting practice I gab a quick $10 lunch in the A’s media press room before I head back out to the field to wait in the Tigers dugout for players to start coming out around 20 minutes before game time. On this particular day Cabrera, who is having a tremendous season, was in a great mood before the game. He joked around in the dugout with teammate Magglio Ordonez that made for some real fun feature pictures (see top).

Once the game started I went over to the third base photo box to shoot Cabrera batting. Cabrera is a right-handed hitter who looks good from third base when he turns on the ball, and early in the game the batters are nice and back lit from third base so I can see his face. Luckily Cabrera cooperated by hitting a home run and posing as he watched the ball soar over the left field fence (see above). Once I knew I had some nice frames from third base I went over to first base late in game as the sun had moved over by then, creating some nice back light on home plate when Cabrera stepped into the batters box.

I got one nice picture of Cabrera hitting the ball in his last at-bat (see above) from first base and pretty soon my day was over. I had done all I could to give my editor a variety of pictures of everything Cabrera had done before and during the game. I shot him from many different angles facing left and facing right. I felt really good about my take that day.

The story finally came out in the magazine last week with a tremendous opening picture shot by staffer John Biever in Detroit. They ran one of my pictures from the dugout, so that made me happy. All in all it was a typical day at the ballpark on assignment for the magazine. Cabrera performed well for me and I did my job. It could have been much worse. He could have not been in the lineup!