A Morning at the Practice Field

We made a list of things to do in Florida today:
1. See if the practice field was open to fans.
2. Get lots of locally-grown produce at the Kissimmee farmers market.
3. Make the annual pilgrimage to the Monument.
4. Go to Cocoa Beach. (This was for my sister, who's from beach-deprived Colorado.)


The practice field was open to fans this morning. Once we got there, most of our other plans went out the window. We spent hours watching pitching practice, one-on-one and group coaching, and a pair of minor league practice games.

There were plenty of gargantuan lenses being lugged around, some by fans and others by pros. I chatted briefly with Ben from Round Rock, who's here with a contingent of reporters and photographers to check up on the Express players. He and the other serious photographers will probably attest to the veracity of the old saw: "Size does matter." (At least with lenses.)

But with such great material - hundreds of very buff young men playing baseball - it would be virtually impossible not to take a lot of good pictures, even with a point-and-shoot. I have a new camera - a Canon SX10 (10 megapixels, 20X optical zoom). It's not the souped-up DSLR of my dreams, but so far I'm pleased with the pictures. I've posted some of my practice field photos on the Photo Album of my website.

A few words before you click off to go look at the photos. I tried to post a set of pictures that were representative of the practice field experience, from a fan's perspective. There are a whole lot of farm-team players out there, and the vast majority of them are not the hot prospects that get written up and photographed by the baseball press. There are lots of players that most of us have never heard of - and maybe never will. The magic thing about the practice field is seeing hundreds of young men who all have the same dream. The hard thing about the practice field is realizing that most of those hundreds of young men will never experience that dream coming true. (Hey, I'm a mom, with sons their age.)

I was very democratic in selecting players to photograph - I just took pictures at all the fields, and posted a selection of them. Other than Biggio (an obvious photographic target), I didn't particularly seek out any particular people to photograph. Some of the brand-name prospects you might want to see are still with the big league team anyway. Hopefully, for those of you who aren't here in Kissimmee, these pictures will give you a sense of the fan experience, wandering around the practice field and watching baseball players in the making.

I especially like to photograph coaches working with the players and watching them play. There's no place like the practice field for photos of coaches at work - both the regular coaches and special guests. Last year I was lucky to be in Kissimmee when Jeff Bagwell was there, and I got great photos of him coaching the minor league players. This year I was equally lucky: Craig Biggio was out on the field working with some of the players and watching the practice games with the coaches.

Anyway, if you like the few pictures I've posted here in the blog, check out the Photo Album, where there are more pictures in a little larger format. Let me know (by way of comment) if you like them.

As for the rest of our plans, by the time we got to the farmers market, they were closing. We did make our pilgrimage to the Kissimmee Monument, which is a singularly ugly edifice. We go there every year. (I will have to do a future blog just on Kissimmee sites.) We didn't make it to the beach; instead I spent the afternoon drinking merlot and cropping photographs while my sister swam a couple of million laps in a pool that was designed for families to splash in.

Tomorrow: The Reds. We'll be sitting in Section 104, Row 2, behind third base. If you're at the game, I'm easy to recognize. I'll be the only person in the stadium wearing a Hebrew Astros hat.