Shooting For Both the Charlotte Knights and the Indianapolis Indians

As you may have read yesterday I was in Indy Saturday to shoot the International League game between the Charlotte Knights and the Indianapolis Indians. I was just shooting for Charlotte until the day of the game when I learned that Indy needed coverage of two of their top prospects who were making their Triple A debuts. It was a right place, right time situation that allowed me to make some very cool photos. I had a great time, and I feel like I have a lot to talk about. This would be a good post to sit down and make some time to read I think. It is going to be a long one.

Seeing Phil Niekro in Person

Every home Saturday game in Indy has a promotion where a former player comes to sign autographs for the fans. Saturday just so happened to have Phil Niekro in the house. Phil was the first knuckleballer that I saw play. He was the one that made me appreciate the pitch. Before the game started I went out to the outfield to photograph Phil interacting with the fans. He was really good with them even though he had many to get through. After he was done there it was time for the first pitch. I made my way behind the plate to photograph Phil throwing the ball to his former battery mate Butch Wynegar. Butch was the catcher who caught Phil’s 300th game when Phil was with the New York Yankees. As I walked away from the field after the pitch I kept thinking that I just photographed Phil Niekro pitching. It is something how I do not get star struck with the current players, but the guys that I grew up watching really do make me star struck. This was a great bonus to an interesting night.

Tyler Glasnow Makes His Triple A Debut With the Indianapolis Indians

I had two assignments for the Indianapolis Indians. They were to photograph Tyler Glasnow and Josh Bell as they made their Triple A debut. You can read all about the night I had photographing Josh here. He had a night worthy of his own post. Tyler is the #1 prospect in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. He started the game for Indy, and had a good night. He had to work around some miscues by the defense behind him, but he did very well for his first start. You could see a bit of the nerves in the dugout prior to the game, but once he was on the mound I could not any of those nerves. He started the game very strong, and appeared to be no match for Charlotte. He has a great pitching motion so it was fun making images of him.

Dayan Viciedo Makes His Way Back to the White Sox

Dayan Viciedo made his debut this season for the Charlotte Knights Saturday night as well. The White Sox had just signed him again after letting him go earlier this season. Tank has a violent swing that can make the ball go very far when he makes contact with it. It was really something being that close to him as he took his swings. It will be interesting to see if Dayan makes his way back to the White Sox this season.

Another Steve Lombardozzi

When I go to games I always look at the rosters for familiar names. Sometimes I come across a name from the past that I know. When I saw the name Steve Lombardozzi I immediately thought of the Minnesota Twins and a specific baseball card from my childhood. As it turns out this Steve was his son. It seems like I am seeing a lot more of these players lately, and that can only be because I am getting older. Steve from the one game of data that I saw seems like a good ballplayer. Sometimes those guys just have a look to them that you see that they get it. Steve is in that category.

Seeing Some Familiar Faces Again

This was an interesting game for me as I saw many former players that I enjoyed watching. One of those players was Matt Davidson. Matt was a player that I watched play in South Bend when he was a member of the South Bend Silverhawks. At the time the Arizona Diamondbacks had two young third basemen on the team, and Matt was the one that was not as highly touted. He had a high draft pick ahead of him, but Matt quickly jumped ahead of him. I always thought that Matt had big things ahead for him. The nature of baseball though is that you have to be in the right place at the right time. Another former Silverhawk playing in the game was Keon Broxton. A couple of weeks ago in South Bend I was talking about how much fun it was to watch Keon play. He has some wheels on him. He did not have a great game Saturday night, but he did have a really good game from what I saw Sunday. Another player of interest to me was Tyler Colvin. If you have read my stuff then you know that I am a White Sox fan. I don’t root for too many players on the Chicago Cubs. Tyler is one of the guys that I really liked to watch play for the Cubs. For some reason you latch on to certain players, and I liked the way that Tyler played. He really has never seemed to be the same after a piece of a broken bat made its way into his chest cavity after he was stuck while on third base. He is still playing the game that he loves though, and it now with a good organization. He is one call away from playing for the White Sox.

Charlotte Knights at Indianapolis Indians Photo Gallery

Well I think that I have rambled on enough about the game. If you can’t tell already I had a great time at the game photographing it. I think that you can see that in the photos that I made. Below are a few bonus photos from the game that I liked.