Thursday, September 30, 2021

Ballpark


I am studying baseball. No, I am not trying to play baseball. I just would like to understand it.
This September I was in Oracle Park to watch the game between host San Francisco Giants and visiting team Atlanta Braves, Here are photos of Giants starting pitcher Anthony DeSclafani at various stages of the pitch.









And here is how it looked  at the other end of the pitch. Giants catcher is Buster Posey. Which player at bat from Braves team are am not sure.


Both team needed the win to stay on the top of division. Giants looked like in better position: they had best record in MLB and secured playoff at least as wild card player. Braves was under pressure of coming very close Phillies and without a chance to get a wild card place in case Phillies will be at first. But that particular day was not good for Giants. They lost 0:3. And now thirteen days later  at the end of September, position of Braves looks better compare to Giants. Braves clinched the division, while Giants is still fighting vs Dodgers to be on the first place. 
While game result was a disappointment, I became the witness of the seldom baseball event: Braves hitter Eddie Rosario hit for the cycle: single, double, triple and home run. If you  need to know what does that mean you better to consult some credible source: I myself got the knowledge about that event just when it happened. What I do know now that within ~150  years of MLB history such an event took a place only 304 times, in other words in average two times per year. To understand specialty of this event take in to account that 2430 games are played in the regular MLB season not counting the postseason.  Guess how many photos of Eddie Rosario I made during that game? No single photos, nil. Next time I will try to picture each hitter at least once. Just in case something similar occurs.

To know more about that particular game you can visit this link:


And here is just one more photo from the park. It is nice place to be especially when there is sunny September day.


Update 10/03/21. Giants won the division at the last day of the season, They beat Padres and gained 107 wins (franchise record). They will play playoff series against winner of wild card game: Dodgers (Los Angeles) or Cardinals (Sent Luis).
 
Update 10/14/21. Today Giants lost series to Dodgers while Braves still alive and will play Dodgers in National League series. In Bay Area baseball season is officially over.
  
Update 10/17/21. Yesterday Braves played first game of the series  against Dodgers. And both heroes of the game against Giants showed remarkable performance.  Eddie Rosario scored for Braves very first run. In the first inning he singled, then stole second base, then reached third on groundout and eventually reached the home on the wild pitch. Overall Braves scored three times, while there pitcher Max Fried allowed only two runs. It make a sense here to put picture of Max Fried taken on September 19 game against Giants.


Update 11/04/21.  Two days ago Braves won world series. The last winning game against Astro they finished with score seven to nothing. Guess who was the starting pitcher for the Braves? Right, Max Fried.


Friday, September 17, 2021

Hare

 


I made photo of this hare (or jackrabbit -  not sure how to properly name this creature)  this September in proximity of town Williams, California. Seems like it completely ignored presence of people around.  So we came to it very close. Some excerpts of photo EXIF:

  • Camera model: Pentax KP
  • Lens: Pentax SMC DA 18-135mm
  • Exposure time: 1/60 s
  • Aperture f-stop: f8
  • Focal length: 135mm
  • ISO 200
  • Capture Time: 9/13/2021 8:15 AM.
Eventually, when we came too close, hare raised and start to run. I tried to picture it running. That attempt was not absolutely successful and photo came out far from perfect. Still I decided to put it here just for the sake of comparison.



Run, Jackrabbit, run!