Army has an opportunity this weekend to distance themselves from the pack with four games at West Point against Lafayette. Army is 10-2, Lafayette 3-9… this could get ugly.
I shot last weekend’s doubleheader between Army and Lehigh — a sweep on Saturday for the Black Knights. Army catcher JT Watkins smacked a home run and my photo of the swing made USMA’s recap.
Saturday wasn’t the warmest day at West Point, but it was an entertaining game. One Army fan really got to the third base umpire, who actually stopped the game and had him “ejected” from the stadium. The guy just walked around over to the first base side and continued heckling the other ump… hilarious stuff.
One moment caught me a little off-guard — I don’t recall what time it was, but at one point you could hear a distant horn player. Everyone on the field stopped playing, spun around and froze — cadets were lowering the flag. I managed to quickly sneak in a few photos during what was a really cool moment:
I’ve written previously about how nice it is to shoot from third base at West Point. With spring popping up finally in the Hudson Valley, we had some green here and there around post, so my nice solid grey backgrounds weren’t so grey anymore. I put on a 1.4x extender on my 400mm lens, effectively shooting at 560mm @f/4, and took this frame of the famous George Washington monument in “the plains,” the parade grounds that sit beyond the right field wall at West Point.
The statue itself is pretty far away from the field — a few hundred yards, easily — but with the long lens, it came out surprisingly crisp, along with the light hitting the buds of the nearby tree and George pointing to the first baseman:
Then I noticed another nice little composition in left field, where cadet David Darnell stood infront of a familiar large grey building bearing the academy’s name. I shot this at f/18 at 560mm to try and get things in focus a bit:
I reeled off a sequence of this double play but didn’t get anything great, although I liked the matching expressions of these two players:
Price also bobbled a routine grounder, hit hard, and I managed to actually swing over and get a few shots of it.
See that? A whole post of baseball photos with no batters or pitchers. I’m heading back tomorrow to West Point for senior day for lacrosse at Michie Stadium, and then to the baseball team’s doubleheader. Expect some more photos!