Superstitions

Let's see, the Cardinals have taken the series from the Cubs, swept the Pirates and now get ready for the Nationals. During Monday night's game I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, on Tuesday night I was wearing pants, a long sleeve shirt, a pullover and a jacket. One night 80 degrees, the next night it was 48 degrees, boy that sucked.
So back to the title of this post " Superstitions". On Sunday morning after we had taken 2 games from the Cubs, one of the field ushers came up to me and sarcastically said " Boy it's a little dirty around here, we need to sweep". For those of you not getting the meaning, he was referring to the Cardinals chance to sweep the Cubs and win all 3 games. Well of course we all no what happened the Cardinals lost, no sweep.
Now the next example was yesterday, the game is in the ninth inning and the Cardinals are one out away from Mark Mulder's 100th career victory, a Jason Isringhausen save and a 2 hour and 10 minute game. So the fan next to me tells his buddy out loud how fast the game has gone and they can still make it to wherever they want to go after the game with plenty of time. What happens? Izzy serves up a game-tying home run to strike-out King Jose Hernandez, but luckily Albert won the game in the bottom of the ninth 20 minutes later.
These 2 examples just help to prove that you can't talk about a victory before the game, or how fast the game is going or how the pitcher has a no-hitter going because baseball is full of superstitions that always seem to come true whether you believe in them or not.
I am actually adding to this post a day after I originally published it because last night during the game against the Nationals I noticed that their pitcher was throwing a one-hitter in the sixth inning. Well I looked over to the Post Dispatch photographer Chris Lee and said out loud "hey look Armas is throwing a ONE-HITTER". Chris laughed knowing about this post and sure enough the next Cardinals hitter got a base hit! No more one-hitter for Armas.
If only I could harness this power.

A Busy Weekend

The weather cooperated, the first homestand of the season is over, the Cards won some games, and now the depressing Blues season is history. It was definitely a busy weekend. I feel bad for the Blues, it was some of the saddest hockey I have ever seen and I love shooting hockey so I thought that I could look past the way they played, but it was tough. You could really tell that they tried to play well, they just couldn't play well as a team. Oh well, no playoffs for the first time in Blues history, and I feel sorry for my friend Mark, the Blues team photographer. But now I am ready for a summer of baseball in a new home. Starting this Friday with the Cubs, we begin a 10 game homestand, I should be pretty used to the new Busch Stadium after that. One of the nice things about the new ballpark is that there are a lot of good places for remote cameras, so hopefully I will use remotes more often, we have 5 day games during this next homestand. So I'm going to start getting my archive software ready for a new baseball season and as they say......PLAY BALL!!

A Hot One

Wow, it's the middle of April and instead of wearing a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a jacket and batting gloves to shoot a ballgame, I wore a t-shirt and shorts and found myself looking for shade whenever I could. Of course I am talking about today's day game between the Brewers and the Cardinals at Busch. It was 90˚ out and probably reached 100˚ on the field. In 23 years of shooting baseball I don't remember a game this hot so early in the season. I am still trying to get used to the new park, I know I will enjoy shooting there. It will be interesting to see how the light changes with the season. I got a nice shot of Albert Pujols in the dugout, the light was really nice. Hopefully this weekend the weather will be good, we have two day games and I would like to walk around the park a bit during the game.

Welcome

Wow! Now I am really keeping up with the times, I have my own blog! If you are here and reading this then you already know who I am and what I do, so I won't bore you with details. I thought I would create this blog so that I can let friends and family know what I have been up to and what's going on in my life. So, enough of the small chat, on with the blogging.
Yesterday we finally had Opening Day at the new Busch Stadium. It was a pretty neat experience, seeing how the light will move across the field, seeing the actual game from the photo pits, trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B and so on. Thank God the Cards won, makes it a more fun day than it could have been. Hanging out with all of the photographers is also a good time and hearing what new angles or ideas they may have is also important in a new ballpark. Well, the Nashville Predators are here playing the Blues tonight so it might be a little interesting, they don't seem to play nice with one another. Thursday we have our first 12:10 Cards game at Busch so that will be fun and then day games on Saturday and Sunday with night Blues games following, I don't know if I will do both Blues games after baseball or not. That's all for now, so thanks for checking out my blog, I hope to update regularly, your comments are appreciated.