This was a very strange baseball game

[dr4b]

Their spikes seemed to be very, very slippery, and for some reason they kept their bats on the ice and swung at a very flat ball all the time, and they got in trouble for lifting them up. Also the catcher was wearing a lot more padding than usual, and people kept piling up on him. Very odd.

No, so really, today I went to the Flyers-Islanders game with Ken, one of my baseball friends who actually lives in New York and blogs about the Islanders, but who claims he loves baseball much more than hockey. Ken got to town around 3:30, and we went to Jim's for a cheesesteak since he'd never been there before, and then made our way across South Philly down to the Wachovia Center, which is much nicer and cleaner than the Spectrum, except the floor is just as sticky.

On the way down we'd seen two other guys in Islanders jerseys, and Ken said the Flyers would win 6-1 tonight, and I said "no way! The Islanders are gonna win 4-2! Just watch!"

Islanders got up 2-1 in the first period, but the Flyers got up 3-2 in the second period and both teams scored goals in the third period to make it 4-3 Flyers. I wasn't too far off though.

They totally didn't check what was in my bag. I'd love to go back sometime and bring my big camera and experiment with a new sport... maybe.

I'm really, really tired.

Comments

[radioclash22.livejournal.com]

Full write up tomorrow on Okposo Net. I just got home and am dead tired as well. I had fun; hope you did too. Thanks for tolerating another sport for a day.

Baseball reigns supreme, I promise.

[firearmofmutiny.livejournal.com]

Lol, Okposo. He bailed on his college team (Minnesota) mid-season to sign with the Islanders. Gopher fans are still pissed about that.

[radioclash22.livejournal.com]

Yes, it caused quite a stir. And generated a lot of blog hits. However, the creation of the blog predated those events by about a year.

[nppyinzer.livejournal.com]

I tried to shoot hockey a couple of times in New Hampshire. I think I'd rather eat the puck than try it again.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Hockey photography is fun, but can be really fiddly. Even with the point and shoot I use for most things, I have to tweak things for almost every shot, and the closer to the ice you can be, the more it helps.

Hope you enjoyed the game! :)

[metroid23.livejournal.com]

Lucky! I always wanted to go to a Flyers game :)

[genuinekfc.livejournal.com]

the catcher was wearing a lot more padding than usual

LOL. Some of the first hockey goalie masks were actually baseball catchers' masks. The goalie masks changed over the years, until catchers started taking the new helmet-and-cage combo designs back into baseball. (Read in Saving Face)

I'm glad to hear you had fun. Photo taking: good luck. A friend-of-a-friend takes photos for The Daily Bongo. It's a fast game and it's hard to catch the good shots.

[dr4b]

It turns out that I'm unwilling to spend a lot of money to sit closer to the rink, plus I left my big lens in Seattle, I think. Oops. But the goalies definitely reminded me of catchers just in that they were "the guys covered in padding", or maybe more accurately "covered in more padding than everyone else".

[rredhead.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I saw that pic at about 1am and I thought, "Ummm... Deanna? That's a hockey game."
Riiiight.
I need more sleep.

[tame-eep.livejournal.com]

Hockey is one of the toughest sports to shoot, though a lot depends on what you're looking for. It's fast, hard to predict where the action will be, and the boards and glass are easier for the AF to lock on to than the players. At least an NHL arena will be bright, and the masks leave more exposed than in football.

[captain-squid.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the speed and the glass, though I wonder how much of the hard-to-predict action is a function of familiarity with the game. I've gone to enough games at this point that I can anticipate a lot of things.

Related: sometimes when I'm watching a game on TV, the cameras will break to show a penalty or a fight or a good play that's away from the puck. I know some of this is due to there being plenty of cameras pointed all over the ice, but sometimes it seems like they catch these things before the commentators (or even the refs!) do. I should start paying better attention to the hockey broadcasts I watch, and see if there's a correlation between this "predictive coverage" and the producer.

[dr4b]

I was actually trying to figure out how many cameras they must need and at what spacing intervals around the arena, for things like instant replay and whatnot (like in yesterday's game, a guy got tripped, but I totally couldn't tell without replay).

In baseball, actually, TV coverage is good because there's less action, BUT there are a lot of things going on where the baseball is not, that you will NEVER see on TV. Like in Japan there's this one shortstop, Ibata, who's simply brilliant -- on TV you'll see when the ball is grounded to him and he makes what looks like an easy play, but what you don't see is 4 seconds earlier when he catches the sign for the pitch, looks at the batter, looks at the pitcher, and takes four steps to the left before the ball even is thrown, to make that perfect play.

[shandrew.livejournal.com]

A few more reasons why hockey photos are tough:

- A lot of NHL arenas don't let you bring in big lenses.
- If you have a good seat, you're behind plexiglass, which distorts your pictures (especially around the corners). Press photographers get little portholes to shoot through, and the main ones can use the stadium strobe.
- I end up only getting good fight pictures

[dr4b]

oo! I want to go see the Sharks! Okay, not really, I want to see Devin Setoguchi ;)

But yah, I don't think I could do hockey photos.