Fast food

Today’s Photo Friday theme is fast food, so here is an image of the all-American combination of hot dogs, peanuts, and baseball, which I blogged this past July after a June pilgrimage to see the Red Sox play the Braves in Atlanta.

Tomorrow, J and I have our own day-night double-header as we have tickets to see a Boston College football game in the afternoon and a Bruins hockey game in the evening: two times the chances to get a weekend fast-food fix.

Click here for my most recent batch of New England Revolution soccer photos, from last weekend’s win over the Seattle Sounders FC. There are, of course, a few food shots: enjoy!

 

Eyes

When you go to sporting events with a super-zoom camera, you end up seeing things that might otherwise have escaped your notice. When you go to sporting events with a super-zoom camera, in other words, you discover that spying on your fellow spectators is almost as much fun as watching the game on the field.

I’ve always been a people-watcher, and sporting events are a great venue for people-watching. Sporting events attract large crowds of people, and when people think everyone else is watching the action on the field, they feel free to be themselves in public. Just as folks naturally assume that no one is watching them while they drive, the presumed anonymity afforded by a large crowd allows fans to feel like they’re sitting at home on their couch, watching the game on TV. If everyone else is watching the game, no one will notice (or care) if I spend the game reading the newspaper, texting my friends, or consuming inordinate amounts of food and drink.

Because J and I attend (and take photos at) so many baseball, soccer, basketball, and hockey games, we’ve expanded our photographic subject matter to include many things besides what happens in the actual game. We have an ongoing challenge to one another, for instance, to photograph food, believing that hot dogs, hamburgers, nachos, pizza, and beer add a great deal of “flavor” (both literally and figuratively) to any given event. When I see this picture of an entire tray of snow-cones, for instance, I instantly remember how HOT it was to sit in the outfield at Atlanta’s Turner Field on a sunny, 90-degree day last month. Sweating in the stands–and cooling off with an appropriately cold treat–is simply part of what it means to watch a baseball game.

Because both J and I are constantly on the lookout for interesting candid shots of fans, food, and the like, we spend only part of any given game concentrating on what’s happening on the field. The rest of the time, we entertain one another with an ongoing people-watching play-by-play. I might point J toward an interesting example of fried dough, for instance, or J might nudge me toward yet another shot of someone taking pictures. I’m sure to other people-watching fans, J’s and my behavior is incredibly odd: who, after all, goes to a baseball game in order to watch (and take extreme closeup pictures of) other fans? And yet, I get a perverse kick out of the thought that some other people-watching photographer might be photographing me photographing yet another fan. Isn’t the entire fan experience just as much a part of the game as the actual players and score?

Both my blogging and my photography have always felt a bit like snooping. There’s a vicarious thrill in reading someone’s blog, and there’s an exhibitionist thrill in sharing: we humans seem to enjoy both watching and being watched. The whole point of spectator sports, after all, is spectating, so who can blame you if your eyes wander from the field to take in one’s fellow fans?

Both J and I try to preserve the anonymity of the people we shoot: like Jo(e) with her blogged pictures of friends, family, and naked bloggers, J and I take a lot of pictures of the backs or sides of people’s heads, their eyes hidden by hair, sunglasses, or an occasional pair of binoculars. Both J and I also try to shoot candid shots that respect the human dignity of our anonymous subjects: the point isn’t to catch someone doing something stupid or embarrassing but to capture those moments of genuine humanity we all share. Like journalists looking for human interest stories, both J and I are on the perpetual lookout for images that capture what it means to be alive and human at any given moment.

As admittedly odd as J and my photo-obsessions are, I’d like to think that looking at the world through this sort of eyes is a boon to my creative life. At any given sporting event, there are shots that are obvious–hockey face-offs, for instance, or basketball free-throws–but the real artistry, I think, lies in shooting the non-obvious shot. When I first saw last week’s Photo Friday theme, Eyes, what I immediately considered sharing was an image of gratuitous cuteness. After spending almost a week thinking about last week’s Photo Friday theme, though, I decided to go with something less obvious. My own eyes, it seems, are drawn to shoot things that other folks might not admit to looking at, one of them being the binocular-assisted eyes of other fans at a hot Atlanta ballgame.

This is my long-overdue contribution to last week’s Photo Friday theme, Eyes. Most of today’s images come from my photo-set from the third and final Braves game J and I attended during last month’s Red Sox pilgrimage. Enjoy!

 

To the nines

I’ve blogged before about the importance of donning team colors when you go to a sporting event, but this Braves super-fan has everyone beat. This past weekend in Atlanta, J and I saw an almost equal number of Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves fans in attendance at Atlanta’s Turner Field for the teams’ three inter-league games, but none of them were as elaborately dressed as this fellow with his pseudo-deerskin tunic and turkey feather headdress. If you’ve wondered where the Braves’ former mascot Chief Noc-A-Homa went after he was retired due to complaints of racism, I might have found your answer.

Even if you aren’t in the market for a colorful Native American costume, it can be expensive to wear your team affiliation on your sleeve, particularly if you buy an officially licensed team jersey with the name of your favorite player. And if said player subsequently leaves your favorite team, you’re left with a conundrum: what to do with your outdated jersey? When Johnny Damon left the Red Sox and signed with the Hated Yankees, true-blue Red Sox fans found all sorts of ways to “recycle” their old Damon jerseys, including this bit of sartorial revision:

If your favorite player left your favorite team under friendly terms–or if he at least didn’t sign with your arch rivals–you can get away with wearing his old jersey proudly. After the Red Sox recently acquired long-time Braves’ pitcher John Smoltz, J immediately bought one of Smoltz’s old Braves jerseys on eBay, figuring he’d wear it if we got to see the future Hall of Famer pitch for the Red Sox against his former team. As luck would have it, Smoltz didn’t pitch in Atlanta, so J didn’t taunt any Braves’ fans by wearing his John Smoltz shirt with his Red Sox cap. We did, though, see several Boston fans sporting jerseys for the Red Sox’ former short-stop, Nomar Garciaparra, with the lamentation “No-Mor” added above his name:

If buying jerseys old or new is still too pricey for your budget, you can always make your own fan-wear. If you do, though, be sure to double-check your spelling. Whereas a misspelled Washington Nationals jersey raised $8,000 at a charity auction earlier this year, wearing a home-made Jacoby Ellsbury T-shirt that misspells the name of your favorite Red Sox is just plain embarrassing.

 

Going, going, gone

J and I are leaving this morning for a weekend getaway to Atlanta, where we will attend three Boston Red Sox games just as we did two years ago. Today’s picture is from last year’s Red Sox pilgrimage to California, where we went to three games against the Oakland Athletics while I was in San Francisco for an academic conference. David “Big Papi” Ortiz unfortunately struck out during this particular at-bat, and the Red Sox unfortunately got swept by the A’s. We’re hoping for better luck this year against the Braves.

 

In-between days

T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruellest month, but in New England at least I’d argue for March. Now in March, Massachusetts ballfields are bare…and muddy. Imagine being a New England kid who’s just itching for the Little League season to start, and all you see in the place of a field of dreams is a field of mud.

As I explained this time last year, “March madness” in New England doesn’t simply refer to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament; it refers to The Big Itch we all feel here in the Northeast as spring is in the air but not yet entirely arrived. This morning, the sun was shining and suburban birds were singing…and the temperature was hovering around freezing. Yes, we can see the ground; yes, the snowdrops and crocuses are poking tentatively out of the earth…but at any moment, we New Englanders know the weather will turn, we’ll get one (or two, or three) more snowfalls, and it will feel like January or February again, not the “spring” announced on our paper calendars.

But, hope springs eternal, especially in spring. In the process of making travel arrangements for the May conference I’d mentioned earlier this week, J and I discovered that the 2008 ALA conference in San Francisco perfectly coincides with the Red Sox road schedule, so we’ll be able to continue last year’s tradition of seeing our hometown boys on the road (this time in Oakland), where we can actually buy face-value tickets rather than paying an exorbitant amount of money to set foot in Fenway Park.

So while Curt Schilling and Kevin Youkilis are blogging in Japan as they continue to train for the Red Sox international season opener against (yes) Oakland, I’m spending the in-between days of March looking forward to May, when the Red Sox once again face Oakland in Oakland, and spring will be here for real.

 

Root, root, root for the home…guy

You might remember me mentioning that Red Sox catcher and captain Jason Varitek lives in Waban, the village of Newton, Massachusetts where I spend my long weekends. Although the fan-edited sign that re-named Varick Street “Varitek Street” is now gone, Varitek’s fans and neighbors here in Waban have transformed the Beacon Street bridge over the T tracks into a sort of shrine covered with encouraging signs. Whether or not the Sox sweep the Rockies in tonight’s World Series game, we know that Tek will be in his usual place behind the plate earning his stripes as the captain, and his fans here in Newton (yours truly included) will scream ourselves hoarse in the meantime.

Elsewhere in Waban, Red Sox Mania is reflected in the breakfast specials at Barry’s Village Deli, where this morning I did my loyal duty by ordering an optimistically named “World Series Winner Special”: two eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, and two slices of challah French toast.

Call me superstitious, but I’m a big believer in Wishful Eating, especially in a deli where the walls are covered with Red Sox and Patriots memorabilia, and one of our regular waitresses was wearing (of course) a Jason Varitek T-shirt. With signs and omens like these, things are looking good for our beloved Sox…fingers crossed.

Click here for a photo set of the Jason Varitek/Boston Red Sox fan signs on the Beacon Street bridge.

 

Joy in Muddy-Water-ville

Here’s hoping the kids at the John W. McCormack Middle School in Dorchester, MA have reason to update their playground billboards. (They could do us all a favor by painting over Johnny Damon with a portrait of Dustin Pedroia, for starters.)

I think NH blogger Amy Kane summed up the morning-after mood in Red Sox nation nicely in her post “Papi ate my homework“:

So we won and here we go again. Red Sox Nation (dark green, on this map, plus Japan) will effectively secede from the union for the next week and a half, all because of some guys who play a sport in their pajamas, have weird hair, and spit a lot.

We will be overexcited and overtired. We will get less done. We will pay little attention to national and local news. We will ignore politics. We will be poor citizens. Meetings will end early. Term papers and newspaper articles will be turned in late. Test scores will drop. There will be less charity and volunteering. On sidelines and in auditoriums parents will be tuned into small high tech devices rather than the strivings of their kids.

Production will be down! Emotions will be up! And oceans of cheap beer will be quaffed! (With fistfuls of Halloween candy.)

Amen to that second paragraph particularly! In the middle of an overloaded semester, I already feel “overexcited and overtired”; I’ve already been ignoring politics along with national and local news. Now that the Red Sox have clambered their way out of the almost-eliminated hole they’d allowed the Cleveland Indians to dig for them, I have an excuse for my grading backlog. How can I keep up with grading, for heaven’s sake, when the Red Sox are heading to the World Series?

In Newton, I watch baseball games on an enormous HDTV; in Keene, I have a tiny TV that doesn’t get any channels other than E! Although I’ll miss Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday, I’ll be in Newton for Games 2, 3, and 4…and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to catch the remaining games should they be necessary, even if that means getting up at the crack of dawn on the morning after a game to drive back to Keene for my 8am class.

A girl has to have priorities, after all, and I for one find weird-haired men in pajamas particularly persuasive.

 

Nail-biter!

Today’s Boston Bruins’ match-up with the New York Rangers came down to a single goal as Phil Kessel scored during the game-ending shoot-out. As I type this, I’m home from the Bruins game and watching the Red Sox trying to avoid ALCS elimination during a do-or-die match-up with the Cleveland Indians. If you’re a Boston sports fan this weekend, you’re going to be stub-nailed by Monday from the ulcer-inducing suspense of it all. Go Sox!

UPDATE: Click here for more pictures from Saturday’s Bruins game. Enjoy!

 

Words from above

Here is yet more proof that God speaks through chalk talk. This is not my handwriting, nor is it one of my classrooms at Keene State College. Instead, it’s a random reminder that at least some folks at Keene State, which enrolls a lot of Yankees fans from Connecticut, have the proper baseball allegiances.

On Friday, the midges of Cleveland vividly illustrated how much God hates the Yankees. This afternoon, J and I will be hunkered in front of the TV for a good ol’ New England sports marathon, cheering the Patriots at 1:00, the Red Sox at 3:00, and the Indians, who are poised to sweep those damn Yankees, at 6:30. Go team, with or without divine intervention.

 

Field of dreams

Last night, I drove to western Massachusetts to catch a Pittsfield Dukes game with Rachel and her husband, Ethan. Last year, I’d met Rachel and Ethan in North Adams to watch Keene’s own Swamp Bats lose to the Steeple Cats, but this year, our schedules didn’t allow us to meet for a Swamp Bats game. So instead of root, root, rooting for my home-team, last night I made like a Pittsfielder and made pilgrimage to historic Wahconah Park to cheer on the Dukes.

I’ve blogged before about the the New England Collegiate Baseball League, the regional collegiate league to which the Keene Swamp Bats, North Adams SteepleCats, and Pittsfield Dukes all belong. As much as I love Major League Baseball, there’s something delightful about seeing college kids playing their hearts out in a small-town setting. This is amateur baseball in the best sense of the term: baseball played for love, not money. Although many players participate in the NECBL to strut their summertime stuff in front of professional scouts, these are players who haven’t yet made it to the big time. In an era when many Major League fans are disgusted with players who lie about performance-enhancing drugs, whine about their multi-million-dollar salaries, and otherwise serve as poster boys for Bad Behavior, regional leagues like the NECBL offer a more wholesome, small-time version of America’s favorite pastime.

Part of the allure of any baseball game–major league or otherwise–is the game itself, the daunting challenge of hitting a round ball squarely teamed with the intricate dance of well-choreographed defense. Watching baseball is a leisurely pursuit: you spend much of your time waiting for the next batter, waiting for the next relief pitcher, or waiting for umpires to confer over a questionable call. The down-times of a good ballgame, however, serve as counterpoint to a good game’s heart-pounding moments. There’s nothing like a well-orchestrated double-play or a safely stolen base to get your adrenaline running, but these highlights tend to happen suddenly, in the blink of any eye, right when your mind might have considered wandering. Along with sudden surprises, a good ballgame offers hushed moments of expectation as everyone’s eyes follow a fly-ball, breathless, to a waiting fielder’s glove, or everyone gets on their feet, fidgety, during an inning-ending at-bat.

It’s easy to wax poetic about baseball, seeing the game as an iconic field of dreams. The young men of the NECBL seem to be a dream-filled bunch, sacrificing their summers to play ball in the hope of being noticed by scouts who can pluck them from small-town obscurity. And yet, I suspect that a young ball-player’s dream of fields is fueled not by wishful thinking but by old-fashioned blood, sweat, and tears: these are fields of doing, not dreaming. It takes a lot of work to make it to the majors; it takes a lot of work to finish a collegiate career and leave that league for the Big Time that is life after graduation. It’s easy to quote Hollywood by saying “if you build it, they will come.” What’s difficult is the actual building, the work required to realize one’s dreams through practice, practice, practice.

Whether or not we’ve ever knocked one out of the ballpark–whether or not we’ve ever belonged to any league, major or minor–we all tend a private field of dreams: a wide, fertile space where almost anything can sprout with the proper cultivation. The magic of Hollywood’s field of dreams isn’t the unbelievable phenomenon of Shoeless Joe Jackson sauntering out of a cornfield; the magic of that field of dreams is the sweat equity it took an unknown Iowan farmer to coax a diamond out of corn.

Whether we dream of making it to the majors, making it out of college, or making a living in a world where bills pile more quickly than cash, it’s the building that causes the coming. In the real world as well as on ballfields, dreaming bears fruit only if it’s coupled with doing. Last night in Pittsfield, it was positively dreamy to see two teams of players, their coaches, and a ballpark full of fans gathered to cheer on some doing, the action of a small-town Monday night happening under lights that shone like stars.

Click here to see my full set of photos from Pittsfield’s historic Wahconah Park. Enjoy!