Mangin pictures featured on 2010 All Star Game Program covers

Posted on August 10, 2010

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.

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!

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.