The joy of day baseball in The City

Posted on August 14, 2014

Manager Robin Ventura #23 of the Chicago White Sox kicks dirt over home plate after he was thrown out of the game for arguing a reviewed play that reversed a call giving the San Francisco Giants a run in the bottom of the seventh inning at AT&T Park on August 13, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

 

Yesterday afternoon’s White Sox and Giants interleague game in San Francisco won’t go down as one of the best played or most exciting games of the season. The Sox are having another sub-par season and the Giants are limping through August clinging to desperate playoff hopes. As a baseball photographer I am going through my own dog days of the season, but yesterday’s wacky 7-1 Giants win did a lot to put a spring in my step for the last six weeks of the season.

I had no specific assignment heading into yesterday’s 12:45pm start. I was shooting stock for myself, but I wanted to stay as far away from traditional vertical, baseball-card style pictures as possible. By this time of the year I have most of the stuff I need of batters and pitchers shot with a 400mm lens. This was going to be a day of playing around, having fun, and shooting as much as I could from one of my favorite spots at AT&T Park: inside third base. The great Sports Illustrated photographer V.J. Lovero always called inside third “the creative position,” and he was so right!

A day at the ballpark has a very special cool factor when Bay Area legend Michael Zagaris is there, and yesterday brought the Z-Man out to see the many Cubans playing for the Pale Hose, and his old buddy Mark Parent (see above). Parent is the bench coach for the Sox, and his dad played American Legion ball with Zagaris up in Redding, California many, many years ago. Parent and Zagaris always look forward to seeing each other so they can catch up and rehash old stories. Yesterday was no different, and I had the unique pleasure of listening in on some very funny tales. My favorite story involved Billy Martin, Shooty Babbitt, and a sandwich. I will let your imagination run wild with that one.

After shooting some normal stuff of Giants starting pitcher Jake Peavy and a few other guys for three innings outside third base it was time to pop out of the dugout, walk across the red dirt in front of the Giants dugout, and drop down the stairs on the inside of the Giants dugout and sneak behind television camera man extraordinaire Rusty Phillips so I could settle into my spot inside third. Once I got situated I was excited at what I saw in front of me. I had a cool angle on everything, I was low to the ground, we had GREAT clouds overhead, and I was rooting for pictures instead of worrying about the stumbling Giants.

The Giants have been in an incredible free fall for the past two months. They seem to have lost 73 games in the standings to the rival Dodgers (actually around 15 or 16). The season appears to be doomed. I had just been a fan the night before and seen another crushing loss in extra innings. Too many times I let my mood about the team show up in my pictures. This was a day when I was hoping the pictures would be good no matter what the outcome. It helped that the Sox brought Cuban rookie sensation Jose Abreu with them (see below). I have photographed the young star a few times already this year, both during spring training in Arizona and the regular season in Oakland. I was getting another crack at him yesterday and aimed to get a few good frames of him.

Watching and shooting the game through the lens of my 70-200mm zoom (and my iPhone as I was constantly trying to get a player in the same frame as some clouds from my low spot for an Instagram) was so much fun. If you concentrate on what happens right in front of you it is amazing what you can get. You end up with a set of pictures you don’t normally see, and let me tell you during the long baseball season that is a very good thing.

As the game progressed it seemed like another typical Giants game. They were not hitting, thus they were not scoring. Peavy was throwing well, but trailed 1-0 heading into the late innings. Coming into the game with a 2014 record of 0-13 between stints in both Boston and San Francisco it appeared the snake bit righty was on his way to loss number 14.

Then, in the bottom of the 7th inning, all Hell broke loose. The Giants were still down 1-0 when their rookie second baseman Joe Panik came to the plate with guys on first and third with one out. Panik shattered is bat and hit a ground ball to first. The throw home nailed Giants base runner Gregor Blanco by 20 feet. He was a dead duck. Meat at the dish. OUT. The Giants were on their way to squandering another opportunity. But wait. The Giants claimed that Sox catcher Tyler Flowers illegally blocked the plate on the play. The new rule that went into effect this season has been a confusing mess all season, and after a five minute replay delay the call was reversed. Blanco was ruled safe. The score was tied at 1. Sox manager Robin Ventura went nuts, and rightfully so. The Sox got hosed.

Luckily for me Ventura went crazy right in front me. He channeled the earlier mentioned Martin by repeatedly kicking dirt on home plate in protest after being tossed from the game, making great pictures. This was the break the Giants needed as they went on to score seven runs in the inning as the Sox fell apart.

There wasn’t much left for me to do but shoot some wide batting pictures, look for facial expressions in the dugout, and shoot multiple Giants flying around third base on their way home for another run.

Getting out of the park and fighting through San Francisco traffic after weekday afternoon games can be a nightmare. Just getting on the Bay Bridge can take an hour sometimes. Yesterday I did not care. I knew I had some fun pictures and I couldn’t wait to get home and edit them. Here are a few of my favorites from a great day at the ballpark. I hope you like them.