Major League Baseball in Sydney
20-23 March 2014. Major League Baseball comes to Sydney. I’d spent the best part of 18 months working to secure business with the MLB for the company that I worked with at the time – it ended up being fruitful both professionally and personally. Going the extra mile, I was more than happy to provide onsite support for each of the games “just in case”.
The Australian National Team played a warm up game against both the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers prior to the MLB season opening games over the weekend. For the Southern Thunder as they are known, this was not only a chance to play the best in the world, but at home in front of arguably the largest crowd’s baseball has attracted in Australia outside of the Olympics in 2000.
Shooting baseball was essentially a new experience for me – my only prior game, was in 1992 in Los Angeles, (more of that in a later post) – but essentially it was a blurry mess! This was a perfect opportunity to shoot at will, with flexibility to move around. As a result, over the 4 games I shot close to 4000 pictures – in varied quality, but some that are still in my most favoured.
On the Thursday night, Australia played the Dodgers in the first game and were unlucky not to cause an upset going down 4-2. The Dodgers squad took the opportunity to get some game time into their squad prior to the start of the season proper. From a photo perspective I used both of these Australian games as an opportunity to find the best places to shoot from, and also to practice different skills in shooting.
One of the weirdest techniques, and one that can only be used in certain positions, is watching the action through both eyes – focusing on 2 different subjects at the same time. By habit I view through the viewfinder of my camera with my right eye, as most people do closing the left. What I found to work was I would frame the intended picture with my right, and then watch the action with my left, in this instance, waiting for the pitch to commence, and then take the shot or shots. The two action shots shown were taken using this method. The picture of Juan Uribe has captured the ball just entering his hit zone.
Friday it was the Diamondbacks turn to play Australia, and they struggled from the first pitch, ending up losing 5-0. This was more of a statement for Australia than a concern for Arizona!
It was this game, and a variation on the above technique, this time with a slower shutter speed, that I captured the cover photo for this section of the website, and to date my all-time favourite baseball photo.
On first look, it looks to be just a blurry mess. But when you look at it further, not only can you make out the Australian jersey of Todd Van Steensel but you can also so the drop on his pitch as it happens! It’s impossible to actually know the speed of this pitch now, but it was probably 80+ mph. I just love this picture, and to date have not been able to recreate it!
Leading up to the Dodgers Diamondbacks games, press had focused on the Dodgers, and specifically their pitchers – superstar Clayton Kershaw who was adamant that he was travelling to Australia and would play, and the alternate star pitcher Zack Greinke who had absolutely no excitement for Australia and as such stayed home! Kershaw was listed to pitch in game 1, and I had read somewhere that he had a habit of taking time before games to sit in the outfield, alone and just take a moment. The picture below is one that I was specifically looking for – and I suspect not too many Australians would have known was coming, or would have realised the actual background behind it – if they even noticed at all!
Clayton Kershaw sits and reflects before game 1.
Game 1 I was moving around the ground a lot “in the name of work”, but did manage to capture what is becoming a more memorable photo as years go by. The picture below shows Hanley Ramirez along with Yasiel Puig and Justin Turner. Ramirez was a seasoned veteran at the time, but Puig was starting his second season with the Dodgers and Justin Turner – this was his first MLB game with the Dodgers after being cut by the Mets. This is the only picture I have of him from the game, but I can at least say I have it, and I saw he, Kershaw and Kenley Jansen all play in Australia – and all on this one night! World Series 2020 was still 6 years away!!
Hanley Ramirez Yasil Puig Justin Turner
On the Sunday it was a day game, and much had been said about the lengths the teams were going to travel wise. Qantas had organised for all luggage to be collected from the Cricket Ground and taken direct to their charter flights which would leave as soon as the game ended. Shower bus plane home! The game itself went for 4 hours, after which I actually did work, I didn’t leave until after 10pm that night, packing up the equipment that we had provided.
I took the opportunity to take some landscape photos today. This series also marked the opening of the new grandstands at the Cricket Ground. The photo below is taken from the upper corner of the Bradman Stand, I’ve picked this one because it shows both the history of the ground with the old stands, the new buildings and then the colours – red and blue from the teams and the greens of the grass and grand stands. Couple that with America’s game being played at the (Sydney) home of cricket, to a full house of fans. It’s not the most exciting of photos content wise, but once again, when you look into it further, the picture itself tells a story of a thousand words!
