Little League, Big Emotions...

Since the majority of the sports we cover is high school and college, the summer is pretty much the dead time of the year as far as sports coverage goes. So, to get something local we spend a lot of our time covering events that we wouldn't normally cover during the rest of the year. Little League is one of them. This isn't exactly terrible, however, since it's at least the cream of the Little League crop, the all-star tournaments.

The big problem I have with covering little league is a lot of shooting baseball is anticipating action and where the ball is going to go. Normally, with high school and college hitters, I expect hitters to pull the ball. So, I set up to be ready for a player to pull the ball. This isn't really the case with little leaguers. They tend to spray the ball all over the place. It seemed like I spent more time missing plays because I anticipated the ball going the wrong way!

The best part about shooting the young kids is they are still playing just for the fun of the game and the emotion they show is pure, raw emotion. They still get excited about the little things and cheer like crazy after a home run. They even tend to cry after they strike out. I've always been a fan of the reaction shots, since my job is about telling the story of what happened, reactions are the best way to tell the story , of course provided the picture does tell the story.