All Star Game Take 3!

My last post on the All Star game (Maybe). Yankee Stadium is a great stadium and what a place for the 15 inning pitcher's duel the other night. I surely thought that the National League was going to win the game when they carried the lead as late as they did and their pitchers were doing awesome. In all reality - both teams' pitchers were on.

As the game wore on it became unbelievable. My brother and I looked at each other at the end of the tenth when the National League escaped the bases loaded with no outs jam and said at the same time - "Can you believe it?"

We stay until the 13th inning and if I hadn't had to go to work early the next morning we would have stayed for the whole thing. We had a great view when Navarro was tagged out at the plate in extra innings and just didn't know if it was ever going to finish.

It still leads to the debate of whether All Star Games should end in a tie but on the other hand, when I was growing up I don't remember every player who made the All Star Team playing. Should the manager try to play everyone or should he have pitchers pitch to more batters? Does it make sense to use your bench up early to middle of the game? Does it make sense to take out Manny Ramirez, A-Rod, Ichiro early with their track record with their bats?All questions I know I am not qualified to answer. Maybe I will let my friend Paul do a guest blog on this topic - he lives his life for baseball and can recite almost any stat (actually for his son Zach and the twins they are having). He has a deep passion for the game. So deep - he missed a foul ball at the All Star Game because he was keeping score in his program (didn't do him much good since the score sheet ended in the 10th inning.

What an awesome game for my first MLB All Star Game ever!

Direct TV Blimp in the 10th inning

All Star Game Take 2!

The above photo is one of my favorites from the All Star game. We had our seats right behind the National League dugout and this is a shot of the players watching the first inning on-fold. They were as excited as the fans were and spent almost the entire first inning hanging out on the dug out fence. Surprisingly - Alphonso Soriano isn't in this photo since he spent most of the game hanging onto the fence talking to Wood.
The bottom of the first inning Derek Jeter decided to steal second and was successful. It ended up scoreless but it was still a great steal.
The National league took the lead 2 - 0 until this swing by JD Drew which tied up the game. I may not be a Red Sox fan but JD Drew had a terrific game at the plate and was the reason that the American League won this game.
Mariano Rivera came into the game and had a nifty strike 'em out throw him on the first batter he faced when Navarro threw out the man trying to steal second after Mariano struck out the batter.

What a great game. I ended up taking the wrong lens with me to the game - (do you ever have the right lens when you go somewhere?) but I got it to work pretty well in most situations. I could still run the photos through a noise filter but a lesson here is to make what you have work for you and know your equipment's limitations. All these shots were done with a Nikon D300 camera with an 18 - 200mm VR lens. I had meant to bring my 80-200mm f/2.8 lens but my mistake. I still managed to do decently well with most of the action shots at 1/400th for a shutter speed.

All Star Game!

On Tuesday night I got very lucky. My brother called me on Monday to let me know that he had managed to get 2 seats to the Major League Baseball All Star Game and wanted to know if I would like to join him. See - brothers aren't all that bad.

We headed out to the game a little late since he got stuck at the airport due to a canceled flight. We still managed to make it to the stadium by the National Anthem and it was so cool. All the Hall of Famers were still out on the field and what a great field of players.

They had 4 Hall of Famer Yankees throw out the first pitch after the Boss came out with the ball. Yogi managed to throw out the first real pitch - his other 3 cohorts waited until he threw to let their's go.

Yogi throws out the first pitch!

Yogi Berra, Goose Gossage, Whitey Ford, and Reggie Jackson

These guys were laughing and having a great time. There are all in good shape and let it fly. What a great start to the game. I will write more on the game later and share a few more photos.