I had the good fortune to cover the Lane v. Brooks CPS City Championship on Monday at Wrigley Field. I was in the photo well adjacent, really just part of the Cubs dugout. Very cool.
My article about the game which appears in today’s Inside Booster, Skyline and News Star and is also posted on this blog. I posted my photos from the game there. Many of the photos are unremarkable but I want to put them up so players and coaches might see themselves and others can get a better feeling for the action.
I parked for free in the Cubs “Camry Lot” on Grace. By chance, Quinn Harris and Kirsten Stickney pulled in behind me. Quinn and Kirsten are two of the best photographers anywhere. I have been lucky enough to get to know them some from shooting high school sports over the past few years. I have learned a great deal from them. They are wonderful people eager to help me. I greatly appreciate that.
Quinn takes the most beautifully exposed, colored and composed photos one will see anywhere. Kirsten’s gift for the reaction shot is unequaled. I try to get those shots but never come close to here level. Being there with them made it all the more special for me. Quinn took Kristen and I on a little tour of Wrigley and where to get the best shots. He shots at Wrigley quite a bit.
After the game, I was sitting at a table in the dugout working on my story and Pearl Jam’s “Someday We’ll Go All the Way” song come over the sound system. I got a little choked up.
I have known for some time that it is not advisable to both a photograph and report on the same game. When I started this amateur sports coverage stuff for Patrick Boylan and Mike Foucher’s Center Square Journal eleven years ago, I learned that if I try to do both, I do both poorly. I had to choose one or the other. I choose photography because I like it more. I am better at it than writing.
But I was at Wrigley to do a job. And so I did. I felt like a real working reporter. Frankly, it’s not something I are really up to. My wordsmithing could use plenty of help. I write these articles at the expense of my vanity, because there just isn’t enough reporting on high school sports out there. Michael O’Brien and Mike Clark can’t be everywhere.
As excited as I was to be shooting at Wrigley Field, I knew I really did not have the proper equipment to shoot a baseball game at a major league ball park. One really needs a 400mm/f 2.8 lens. My 7D with the 300mm lens is roughly that equivalent but the quality is greatly reduced—basically a poor man’s rig for the job. But that what I have, so I used it to some effect. I also have a 1Dx so its not like I don’t have good enough stuff. My failings as a photographer are not for want of good equipment. It’s just more suited to basketball.
This day, I concentrated on writing the article for Inside Publications. Throughout the game I kept asking myself, “what is the story of the game?” It didn’t take long to see that the story was how Lane Tech’s junior pitcher, Josh Katz, to over the game.
I cannot overstate how impressed I am with the poise of this young man. He is either 16 or 17 years old and yet he took the mound at Wrigley Field like a seasoned major league veteran and retired the first six batters he faced—1, 2, 3—in the first two innings.
When I spoke to him after the game, I could see just how genuinely excited and happy he was just to be playing at Wrigley Field. He did what he could to take it all in. After the game, I got some shots of him walking out into the infield in the direction of the bleachers just to soak it in.
In my questions, I brought it all back to baseball asking about what pitches he was throwing. He seemed even more excited talking about how his two-seamer was riding in on the hands of the Brooks batters.
Baseball is such a beautiful game played on the grass field between one's ears. Josh Katz gets it. His catcher Zach Shashoua gets it. Lane Tech manager Sean Freeman gets it. The whole Lane Tech Baseball Team, all 500 of them, get it.
I’m not Frank Deford or Rick Telander writing eloquently about the majesty of baseball. But I sure experienced the majesty of the game, our national pastime, at Wrigley Field on Monday. Truly a wonderful experience.