Dugout photos published in 2009 LCS program

Posted on October 19, 2009

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).