Site Overlay

Seeing red… lots of it

Hall of Famer Lou Brock signs a young fan's ball. (Danny Wild/MLB.com)

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.

Mark McGwire signs for Cardinals fans before Thursday's game. (Danny Wild/MLB.com)

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).

Cardinals hitting coach Mark McGwire signs before a game. (Danny Wild/MLB.com)

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.

College basketball coach Bobby Knight shows his Redbirds pride. (Danny Wild/MLB.com)

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:

Braves ace Tim Hudson fires home against St. Louis. (Danny Wild/MLB.com)

And here’s Rich Hill, who has a great deliveryΒ  — as in, very photogenic. He drops his pitching hand way low to the ground in his windup and it’s really funky.

Cardinals starter Rich Hill tosses home. (Danny Wild/MLB.com)

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.

Braves 3B Chipper Jones hit a long homer on Thursday. (Danny Wild/MLB.com)

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

Scroll Up