Spring Training

Well I have been down in Jupiter Florida for 5 days now and the weather is starting to cooperate finally. When I got down here we had highs in the low 60's and it was pretty chilly for Spring Training. Today it's supposed to be in the upper 70's and the funny thing is that I see how warm it is back up in St. Louis.

Usually the best part about Spring Training is that I get back into baseball shooting mode, but this year even my first game 2 hours after I landed went well. I feel like I have been shooting baseball all winter, maybe because I shot my first Cardinals game back in 1983 has something to do with it. It's about time I stop getting rusty in the off-season.

The photos I chose to post are all about timing, usually the hardest part of shooting baseball after a 4 month layoff. The broken bat shot is luck that the ball and bat are still in the frame, I'm just trying to shoot a decent hitting shot and the bat happened to break when Allen Craig made contact. If you look at all of the broken bat shots during the season it is amazing how few have all of the pieces in the right place. The funniest thing about this pic is that Allen is a Cardinals hot prospect that was on loan to the Dominican WBC team that game and it figures that he is the one I get, Not David "Big Papi" Ortiz, Miguel Tejada, or A-Rod.

The next pic is Cardinals 1st round draft pick Brett Wallace who is supposed to have great hitting power. Seeing the bat bend from the sheer torque of his swing is amazing, just try to bend a wooden bat by standing on it, it won't happen. Over the years I have only captured two other Big Leaguers that you can see the bat bend during their swing, Scott Rolen & Albert Pujols.