One Crazy Night in the Bronx

Wednesday, September 21 2022. In September / October of 2022 I went on what would only be called a sporting pilgrimage of the USA, 6 cities, 3 weeks, Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Magic Shows and rock concerts, convertible cars, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas – it sounds like my own version of We Didn’t Start the Fire.

But of focus here, is baseball, 5 games on this visit including San Francisco, San Diego,  Anaheim, my favourite Los Angeles and an iconic trip to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.  This story started the night before in San Francisco a midnight redeye flight across the country all in the name of saving a buck on a night in a hotel.  Arrive in New York at 7am, get to my hotel at about 9am, hoping so much that my room would be ready early as I had a rotten headache and no sleep ! No luck! So I spent the next few hours walking New York, ate some McDonalds in Times Square, and was generally feeling ordinary ! That night I had an expensive ticket to the Yankees v the Pittsburgh Pirates, and sitting there eating McDonalds I was seriously considering a forfeit that night, only the ticket price pushed me through !

The MLB season was winding down, and one of the big stories was Aaron Judge being on track to break the season record for home runs – at the time he was sitting on 59 for the season, he was 1 run behind Babe Ruth and 2 behind Roger Maris.

I managed to get into my hotel room at about 2pm, so I jammed in a power nap and woke feeling a little better - so onto the subway I went, heading to the Bronx, and with only a generalised tourist’s idea of where to go – surely there are others going, I’ll just follow them !  

Yankee Stadium is one of those iconic venue’s even if it’s not the original – it’s a modern great – even for a Dodgers fan.

For the most part the game was non eventful, the Pirates broke free from a 4-4 deadlock in the 8th, jumping to an 8-4 lead, and there were signs of people starting to get out early, the only thing stopping people was Aaron Judge was  due to hit in the 9th. In his 3 at bats that night he’d done nothing. 

My seat for the night was about 10 rows behind the visiting dug out, terrific location where you could really feel the action. Taking photos the entire game, I made a specific effort to actually photo and video each Judge at bat, because history was just pitch away. The actual process of shooting both photo and video at the same time isn’t easy..the process is start videoing on my phone line the shot up holding the phone in my left hand with 4 fingers, and then holding my still camera in my right hand plus the remaining finger from the left. Keep them both still as much as possible, and should a hit happen, follow the ball with both hands and cameras…easy !!!!!

Bottom of the 9th inning, Aaron Judge comes up to bat…the plan was, see him bat, if he fails – bail ! straight to the Subway and some sleep….  Down by 4 runs, Aaron Judge cops a couple of balls and then he gets on that he likes, as soon as he made contact it was obvious this was number 60, straight over the left field fence. The crowd and I too, went completely nuts – We’d just seen history Judge had passed the Babe on the list. Once the craziness died down, I had a quick look at my camera and I had managed to catch the shot ! An iconic picture to add to my collection – the ONLY downside being Judge is a right-handed batter – meaning his back was facing me – not his face ! A key rule of photos is, wherever possible you need to include faces and as much as possible focus on the eyes ! – I struck out on both, but I have got an iconic hit from #99 ! The scoreboard now read Pirates 8-5…the next three batters manage to get on base and all of a sudden then Yankees have bases loaded and the winning batter at the plate – none other than the Yankees other star Giancarlo Stanton. The crowd started to buzz, they felt something was possibly going to happen, they just didn’t know what!

                                                                                                                                                    Aaron Judge hits season home Run #60 - passing Babe Ruth

I again combined the camera and phone and sure enough, lightning struck twice, Stanton hit a game winning grand slam home run to left field, and I managed to capture it on both video and photo. Queue Frank Sinatra and New York New York ringing out over the PA, the whole stadium was going crazy, the Yankees had clutched victory at the depth, and although in the grand scheme of the season it was just another game, it had the feel of a special win. I even went and purchased a Judge TShirt – mind you a did buy 3x Dodgers shirts that trip !!

                                                                                                                                                Giancarlo Stanton with a walk off, Grand Slam Home Run

Id managed to not only capture 2 special moments in history, but at the same time, broke 3 of the golden rules of sport photography. Both of my iconic pictures are missing faces, eyes and the ball ! Typically these are essentials but as with every rule, sometimes they are meant to be broken..or more so rewritten to better suit the situation.

After I got back to the hotel, riding the subway late at night, I firstly watched my videos and sure enough I carried on like a crazy Yankee fan, but more importantly I caught both homeruns in full detail. I later did a search and found a YouTube clip of the inning shot by JomBoy, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJG4-lFXnRQ&t=401 ) of hilarious note is a clip of me using both my cameras doing my bit to capture that one crazy night in the Bronx.