wow, its a been a while since ive written anything, which is sad i guess, but ive been super busy lately. anyways, a little while ago i decided i needed a digital camera. I was taking a sailing class and i am traveling a bunch this fall, mostly to sporting events of course, and i am planning on doing a bunch of picture diary type things of college football games i go to for our college football pool, and so i got a camera. now, i am not very good at taking pictures of things, and i have no idea how to do all the fancy things on my camera so i needed some practice before the big games i will be "covering" this fall. so i took my new camera on my trip to st louis to practice taking pictures at the cardinals braves game that i went to with some friends from purdue, so here is my first group of pictures with my new camera
This is the very first picture i took with my camera, its chipper jones batting. He had a pretty good game.
The upper left field bleachers at new busch stadium is called big mac land. Its called that because Mark McGuire used to hit tons of baseballs into that section after fueling himself up on McDonalds hamburgers (and steroids). Its kind of sad, all of my favorite players growing up, Canseco, McQuire, Giambi, Tejada, were all a bunch of steroid users, i should have picked favorite players like petey does, 5'6" 150 lb middle infielders, no one ever accused david eckstein of being on roids....
Here is a picture of the peanuts i got talked into buying, i had originally decided i didnt want peanuts, because i had eaten a whole bag of them the night before at the wichita wingnuts game i went to, but i was at the concession stand and i said "one beer please" and the lady said "one beer, and you wants some peanuts too dont you?" and i said "...yes" after about a half seconds pause, and she said "wow, that didnt take much convincing, i should have sold you something expensive like a cadillac" and i said "i like peanuts...."
Here is a picture of albert pujols batting, he had a very good game as well, i was happy that both him and chipper had good games, normally when i go to games the big stars always play like crap
hey look, i figured out how the zoom on my camera works, focusing is an entirely different matter...
I took this picture in the second inning cuz the stands were still pretty much empty, it was like i was at a dodgers game
This was a cool apartment building across the street from the stadium, i think it would be pretty awesome to live downtown there and be able to walk across the street to the games like that, but then i remembered it was 94 degrees with 90% humidity and i changed my mind about how awesome it would be to live in st louis, you should never sweat through sporting events you arent personally participating in
Look, its the leaning tower of Pisa! ok, actually PJ just cant hold his camera level.... but it is a pretty cool building, its called the millennium hotel because it was built 1000 years ago.
In case you cant read it the guys shirt says "Id rather have a sister in a whore house than a brother thats a cardinals fan" which i thought was funny but perhaps a bit extreme, i wonder what his sister feels about that
Here is albert pujols rounding third after hitting a weak little homerun, you can see chipper was not at all impressed with it
The scoreboard says pujols' homerun went 402 feet, which is a huge disappointment, i dont want to see him hit little bloop shots that barely clear the wall, i want to watch him hit monster 500 plus foot shots like the one that he hit off brad lidge in the playoffs that one year, the one that turned lidge into a mental case and completely de-railed his career, although i think he might be doing better now
I took this picture right after pujols hit his homerun so i could show how weak it was, it landed in that little dirt area between the stands and the wall above the bud light sign, im pretty sure the wall used to go right up to the stands but then they started testing for steroids and so they decided to shrink the fields a bit to give all the clean hitters a bit more help, im just kidding, i made all that up, the next day in my softball game i hit a homerun that hit off the top of the fence so i shouldnt tease pujols too much about his weak home run, i should tease him more because his name is albert
Every several innings little grounds crew guys would scurry on the field and drag the dirt to make it nice, apparently cardinals managment values these guys more than the players because while they are smoothing the dirt this intimidating character patrols the field, i bet if you were to try to harass the dirt rakers this guy would probably hit you with his little stick hanging from his belt
from our seats you could see the arch and some other wrinkly looking building
In between the 8th and 9th innings all the fans were getting up and leaving, and i thought "wow, this really is like going to sporting events in LA
Oh, perhaps that was why all the fans were moving away, the enormous rainstorm that was coming from behind me that i didnt see, i apologize to st louis for insinuating they have bad fans
I thought the rain delay was kind of fun, our seats were covered so we didnt get wet, and i had never been to a rain delay before so i was excited to watch the little grounds crew guys roll out the tarp, which i must say, they did a very good job
i thought this bit looked pretty fun
This was my favorite guy on the grounds crew, everyone else had left the field but this guy stayed to make sure the tarp was stretched out perfectly
and then after making sure the tarp was sufficiently stretched out, he stood on the tarp making sure it wouldnt blow away, i appreciate the guys dedication, everyone else had long left the field, although i wonder what he thought he was doing that the enormous metal tube was not capable of...
Apparently the tarp works pretty well because after they pulled it off there was a huge puddle on the ground, the one guy in the picture is using a little broom to push water towards the drain behind the infield
Id like to think this is my same favorite little grounds crew guy, he thinks to himself "i am going to help the drain by pushing more water towards it", give that guy a raise
i tried to take a picture of the scoreboard after the game, the braves added 3 runs in the 9th after the delay to win 8-4, which i very much enjoyed, but while i was taking the picture the scoreboard image switched on me all of a sudden which is why it looks dumb, i mean im not a great photographer to begin with, i need the scoreboard to behave for me
Oh man! the international bowling museum!! unfortunately i had to drive back to wichita or i would have definately hit that up "This is my tournament!! This is my tournament!! you see these patches?!"So those are all my pictures from my trip to st louis, there was one picture i really wanted that i was not able to get, on the drive there i passed Emporia State University, and they a big sign when you go by that says "1993 Debate Team National Champions" which cracked me up and i really wanted a picture of it, and so i had planned on taking a picture of it on the way back, unfortunately, at that time i was too busy trying to avoid getting run off the road by Drunky McSwerveson and i wasnt able to get my camera out and take a picture on time, and since it was already 230 in the morning i didnt really feel like turning around and driving by it again just to take the picture...
