gary's great american pastime trips thread

leading off for major league baseball in 2012, those folks from beantown, whose motto this year seems to be, if it wasn't for bad luck we'd have no luck at all. aaron cook, cut by another team, gets picked up by the sox, desperate for starting pitching due to injuries, he gets his first start for them, and in the 2nd inning, while covering home due to his own wild pitch, he gets spiked by the runner, gets patched up and gamely tries to finish to give the pen some much needed rest, that doesn't work out so well, and post game it's reported that it was a slice open enough to require 11 stitches. you can see the blood flow just above his sock and to the right of the trainers thumb. i usually stay to the bitter end, final score, orioles 8, sox 2





more from the game to follow when ready, this thread will reappear from time to time as more trips are completed

 

pitching sequence, i was pleasantly surprised at how good the panny did for sports, i forgot, with no mirror to move up and down this body can really fire off a pretty rapid series of shots. i think i'm even starting to get a handle on how to focus this body, sequence of shots from an aaron cook pitch, taken right before the spiking























this isn't the whole set, but i did not want to make a too large post

 

Very nice... I just have another week and a half before the local minor league team starts their season.


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Nice Gary. Very crisp & colorful. Great job capturing the pitchers follow through.

 

Nice shots gary, looks like you had some nice seats as well.

 

Nice work Gary! ;

 

Nice Gary! ; When is the next trip? ; Is there still a chance to do a TMIP game in Philly?

 

thanks everyone, again, tim you really need to get the bugs out, this is the second time i have typed this post, as soon as i tried to insert a hyperlink in the middle of a sentence, when hit the ok button to insert, i got the blank white screen, all the text was wiped out
paul: yes i had a good seat, i usually start thinking about what trips i want to do by mid december when the mlb schedule is released. i then go to a neat roadtrip planner i found through my membership in ballparkchasers.com. that's a website for folks such as myself with the same goal to see all of them
http://www.baseball-roadtrip.com/
that allows me to project out what teams can become a combined trip, i then start checking the team sites for single game ticket sales. surprisingly, there is no standard sales dates, for instance the rockies were on sale by mid january, red sox by february while i had to call the team offices for the brewers and twins to get a sales date, and most of the teams shut their offices for the month of january when they all take vacations. detroit was my only purchase out of the official site, had to go stubhub for that one, bad as detroit's economy and area is, they are still almost all sellouts and my rule of purchase is, if i cannot get a great seat, between home and first/third, field level box, or no more than 20 rows back, then i just do not do it. i lucked out for washington, that was only added in at the end of march when i got the opportunity to be on call for memorial day and get the free extra day off, which then made a dc trip with a side to the air/space annex possible, and they had a surprisingly good seat selection available. it helps out that i am getting only 1 seat, quite often i find myself filling out the box/row next to a family that has bought an odd number of seats such as 3 or 7. fenway was section 26, box 148, row NN seat 5, a great seat in that it was at the top of the stairs up into the section, so photography was pretty unobstructed all day
john: next trip out of town is 5/18, that's a 2 city/2 team/2 nights/3 flights trip. 5/18 to cleveland for the indians, 5/19 to detroit for the tigers, home 5/20. i found that a lot of times short hop flights from cities not to far apart are not too expensive, and i search all the discount sites, kayak,expedia etc. and my personal travel enjoyment standards are that i'll go $125 over the estimated rental car/gas costs if it means 1 hour of flying versus 6 of driving. i'll do a stop or 2 if i have to, but prefer nonstops. i'm also very fortunate to live within reasonable distance of 4 airports, 3 of which can be reached via mass transit, and islip is a good regional that i can park at the ronkonkoma train station and it's a $5.00 15 minute shuttle ride away. cleveland/detroit/ny is all delta, out of jfk with only 1 early flight, that's 0915 friday, but i'm stayi g a block away from progressive field and it's a night game, so i'll have ample time for a pre-game powernap. unfortunately unlike players, i have no trainer to come in and give me a massage after the game. and my next 2 flights are civilized late morning flights


philly could be possible, i'll have to look at the schedule and see where it would work, i would prefer a sat or sunday day game only because then i could day trip it, philly is an easy ride from nyc and there is almost round the clock hourly northeast service, and lirr to ronkonkoma is hourly with 0400-0600 the only outbound service gap


you've all heard of the wisconsin cheeseheads, well boston's answer is the ice head

 

Great shot, I cant tell if the kid is "playing a role" or just that miserable!

 

sequence of a hit, things are starting to come unraveled here for cook, this was pounded into the dirt, but it did not get better for the sox after this























one of only 2 manual scoreboards left in major league baseball, the other is at the holy ground of wrigley field

 

big papi at bat, and is that an illusion, or does he generate so much speed and torque on the bat head that it seems bowed?

 

I think it is bowed, one way on the back of his swing & the other way on his forward swing.

 

I've seen pics of the ball and bat deforming during the actual hit, but not during the swing. More likely you're seeing the relative rotational speed difference of the bat handle vs the tip show up in more motion blur along the bat. It'd be a neat shutter speed experiment to try to get a clearer pic of what's actually going on.

 

English man, speak English! ; Didn't expect a Physics lesson on here. ; It is more a trick of the eye (similar to the "rubber pencil" trick) in my opinion to (unless he is using a severely weighted bat and the heaviness of it is physically bending the neck of the bat)...


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and one last from fenway before we move on to our next destination ballpark, kind of reminds me of pixelmania, on the rail for illuminations, except without the laptops, said laptops now having killed a great pocket money job at major sporting events that went over several days, that of the film runner, who would rush film, and later on cf cards to the sports illustrated trailer, now it's all just wifi'd on back to the editor trailer or the local sports desk or the wire services.
some serious white lenses there

 

Looks like mostly Canon shooters and Mac users, my kind of crowd!

 

i'm thinking the sd slots all have eye-fi cards, sending it to the laptops, which all appear to have hard wired online connections


next up ballparks, progressive field, cleveland vs marlins, next friday 7:10pm, followed sat by comerica park, detroit vs pirates, 4:05pm, might with free wifi in both hotels be able to have cleveland up on the web before the weekend is out, with a little airport wifi help


PLAY BALL!!!!!!!

 

Say hi to Cleveland for me, my home town. If you like hot wings and a beer selection from the whole world, check out the Winking Lizard Tavern downtown.


Erich

 

if they are Canon shooters, then Nikon must be "PO'd... Check the stickers on the rail the cameras are leaning on...


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