I have to get caught up here on my games, the images are piling up by the hundreds and I’m not even going to attempt to edit them all here in Florida. Here’s a taste of the last couple days for me though.
As you can see, Lou Brock is back with the Cardinals for another spring. Lou is a fantastic guy to have with the team. He’s always smiling and laughing and looking for fans to interact with — the exact opposite of what most Major Leaguers become during the grind of the season. I caught this nice moment (above) of a young fan reaching out to hand Brock his ball before the Cardinals hosted the Braves on Thursday.
The main attraction (in my opinion) was Mark McGwire, who emerged from the Cardinals clubhouse about four minutes prior to gametime and signed for as many fans as he could before reaching the dugout (an AP photog told me he never did such things when he played… times have changed). One thing is noticeable now — Big Mac is not really very big anymore… there’s no hidden joke in that, he’s just a lot smaller than I think he used to be and what I envisioned him to be. Either way, he seemed cool and I lucked out in having a fan stick out this vintage newspaper of his historic No. 62 while signing to make for a cool moment (above).
Who else showed up on Thursday? Hall of Famer Bob Gibson and legendary college basketball coach Bobby Knight (who also once coached at West Point. Bobby and St. Louis manager Tony La Russa are good friends, so this was actually the second time I’d seen coach Knight at Cardinals camp.
I’ve lucked out with some great pitching matchups here so far this week… Chris Carpenter and Anibal Sanchez today, Rich Hill and Tim Hudson on Thursday. Saturday’s matchup is Adam Wainwright and John Maine… can’t wait. Here’s Hudson from Thursday:
And here’s Rich Hill, who has a great delivery — as in, very photogenic. He drops his pitching hand way low to the ground in his windup and it’s really funky.
Chipper Jones (how old is he?) smacked a massive bomb to deep left that bounced off the green metal roof of the Marlins clubhouse. He’s ready.
I’ll catch up later with some shots from today’s Marlins-Cardinals matchup as well as Saturday’s Cardinals-Mets game, my spring finale. Let me know what you think!
-Danny