Regional Champs...

The second game of the Stamford/Forsan series was late Saturday afternoon. Stamford has a thing about playing games late on Saturday, I think it was becoming a superstition thing. Because of this I was hoping for a Stamford win, so I wouldn't have to spend all my night covering two games and that Stamford would put it away early. Well, unlike the game two days before this one was a lot closer. Forsan came out and took the lead early. But as I've watched them do the last three weeks Stamford came back and chipped away at the lead. That coupled with some really poor base running and fielding errors allowed Stamford back in the game.

In the seventh inning holding on to a 6-4 lead, Stamford third baseman Michael Hernandez bobbled a ball and couldn't get the runner out at first. Then in one of the worst base running ideas I've seen in a while the Forsan player on first thried to make it back to third. Hernandez made up for his mistake by getting back to the bag and tagging the player out in a great play to end the game. I was semi-ready for the play. After Hernandez made the throw I just kept my camera on him waiting for a celebration. So, when I saw him running back to the bag I was on it. It turned out really nice, I got the tag, the Forsan player's reaction, and the celebration all together. I also nearly missed it! I pretty much kept the shutter down through the whole play and filled the buffer on my camera and I was stuck waiting a second to get a few more frames available to shoot. Luckily, I didn't really miss a whole lot and it made me be a little more selective with my shots. But, it also gave me enough time to reframe my shot so I was able to move over a hair and get the Forsan player laying down in the background with the Stamford players celebrating together in front and his helmet off to the side (top photo). The rest of the sequence is below. It turned out really nice, and I knew I had my shot as I was walking to my car to edit. That doesn't happen very often.

Last Man Standing...

For the third week in a row I was covering Stamford in their run in the Class A playoffs. It was somewhat of an unlikely run I don't think many people outside of Stamford were expecting the team to get this far. But they were, and playing really well, despite the Bulldogs tendency to play three games each series that I had seen them the two previous weeks. The series was split between the first game on Thursday and the second and third (if necessary) being on Saturday. On paper it wasn't looking too good for Stamford, Forsan had only lost one game all season, in a playoff warmup game. However, after having watched the team the last few week I figured they could keep it close and play a good series. Stamford is a scrappy team, they don't strike out much and put the ball in play a lot, and don't make many errors. In Class A baseball, you don't need a whole lot more than that. When the game started though, it was something that I hadn't expected. Forsan came out and scored in the first inning. Then Stamford got up and nickel and dimed out six runs, then a couple innings later had another six run inning and ended up winning the game with a 10 run mercy rule win in the fifth inning. Like I thought Stamford would be able to play with Forsan, but this was never expected.