Dear dimwit on the phone

This is why Dad wouldn't let me put my fingers in the chain link fence while watching Little League.

 

Hell, we had a photog who was always looking for THE SHOT. He climbed on top of the batting cage ... during the game. Ump ran his ass.

 

My niece's junior high softball team had limited attendance this spring, so one of the parents did a Facebook Live for every game. They put the camera/phone somewhere behind the backstop. We watched a handful of her games and the camera never got hit.

 

I don't think the umpire realized he was there, and no one from the state association was there. This was a Class 1A private school title game, on a Saturday at a campus field an hour away from the association's headquarters. They're not getting out of the fishing boat for that. They gave the trophy to the home team's principal to give to the winner.

This was in the fourth inning, and I first noticed him in the third. When he kept setting up shop there, I snitched.
I was in the home team (our local team) dugout shooting the game and made an offhand comment to a couple of the players, who said something to the coaches, who in turn pointed it out to the umpire and told him to move. It probably helped that it was a 1-0 game and the home team had a runner on second or third at the time.
The players said he was from a paper in Team B's area, and that he had done the same thing in Game 1 of the series that was played up there, so I guess he's just used to having the run of the home ballpark.
But that's one of those things that even if you can, it certainly doesn't mean you should. Just for my own safety I can't imagine standing there, let alone running the risk of interfering with a wild pitch or foul pop up. The boundary for me is the on deck circle. I think it was the fifth inning when, sure enough, someone sent a hard foul tip straight back that would have drilled him straight in the junk.

Of course, not long after he moved he cleared out of the dugout entirely for a bit. A half-inning later there was a head-high screamer toward the near edge of the dugout -- right where a photographer would often stand to be "safe" -- that might have killed someone if it had caught them. So what do I know?

 

Plenty of high school fields now are like the one in my picture, where there is a small wall and a net. You can easily set up a couple feet behind it and shoot stills or video through the net without being in harm's way, and it looks like you're right on top of the plate.

There's a minor league ballpark near me that has a similar setup, except the net is anchored into the ground, there's no wall, and the first row of seats is sunk down so that eye level is right at ground level. It's a really cool angle. I've gotten some great shots there on plays at the plate.

 

Many years ago we hired a photographer who, I guess, was looking to make an impression early in his tenure. He did, but not a good one.

On his first day our photo editor was showing him around and took him to a high school basketball game in the evening. At some point, a couple of teenage fans either got into a fight or were acting the fool and were ejected by security. As they're being escorted out, this jackass runs over and starts snapping pictures of them like it's a perp walk for a murderer. He's walking backward while they're being taken out, jumped up on the first step of the bleachers to get a better angle, the whole bit. Must have snapped off 50 frames of the non-incident.
Then it got worse.
He asked the editor if he could follow them and see what was happening. I guess he figured they were being arrested, instead of just told to leave. She wanted him out of her hair so she could shoot what she needed to, so she told him to go ahead. He goes outside and starts shooting more pictures of them. In the dark. With a flash.
Naturally, this group of upstanding young men was not too happy about this and politely asked him to stop.
OK, they were about to kick his ass.
He starts screaming, "PRESS! PRESS! I'M WITH THE PRESS!!!" as if it'll create some sort of magic force field around him. Thankfully, one of the security guards noticed the commotion and broke it up before anything happened.

I was at the office later and the photo editor walked in. I made a joke about the guy, assuming he was a student photographer she was helping. I hadn't met him yet and didn't even know he worked for us. She just shook her head.
He was fired, if not that night then first thing the next morning.

 

Not to get too far off the dimwit on the phone topic, but we had a photographer early on in my tenure that would go to a baseball game, set up a tripod behind the third-base coaches box and focus his camera on second base. I couldn't count the number of slides at second photos we got from the guy.

Now back on topic. It is nice to be retired and not have to take the dimwit calls.

 

It must be Casual Friday.

 

Yes, reader, it's our fault the game you want to watch isn't on because the game before it is running long.

 

In one of my first games when I was a one-man SE, I covered a high school softball game. I was taking pics, keeping score and taking notes near the local team’s bench. One girl on the local team struck out. I was busy marking it in the scorebook when all of a sudden, I see a bat fly my way. The girl had gotten pissed off at her strikeout and threw her bat, not realizing I was there.

I never knew if the ump threw her out of the game or if the coach benched her, but afterward, the girl, her Mom and the coach all apologized profusely.

 

Apparently we have multiple readers who lose their minds and complain when the standings in any sport shows the local team tied with another team but listed below the other team instead of above them.

 

Oh, man, we always used to get those calls at the Union-Tribune. It would be the Tuesday after NFL opening weekend and if all the AFC West teams were 1-0 (or 0-1) and the Chargers weren't shown at the top, there would be hell to pay with some of our readers.