Today’s telecast was the best show of the year.
An important goal of our production team is to televise an incident on the field that the fans in attendance do not, will not, or cannot see. In fact, two of our camera operators – camera 1 (left field corner) and camera 8 (super slo-mo camera @ mid first base) have no specific camera responsibilities. Their main responsibility is to “show the viewer something he/she has never seen before”.
Today’s telecast included some moments that I have rarely seen during a major league baseball game.
We followed the umpires from their umpire’s room, through the bowels of Busch Stadium, onto the field. Our camera operator stayed at the home plate position and captured the exchange of line-up cards between the two teams. We would like to thank the umpiring crew for allowing us to capture this rare footage. When I asked for the umpire crew’s permission, they were more than happy to accommodate us.
During batting practice for the three games of this series, we captured and saved shots of Cardinals players working on fundamentals. Some of this footage included the starting catcher taking ground balls at third base, shortstop, and first base. There was also a shot of a rookie outfielder taking fly balls over his head to the wall, catching the ball, and throwing it to second base. This may seem to be pretty common footage, but the announce team in the booth really played up the fact that practice is very important to a major league ballplayer. The combination of commentary and video, in this instance, was extraordinary.
With a shutter in our tight centerfield camera (camera 6), we captured yet another example of something on the field that fans in the ballpark did not see.
We took two different pitches from the Houston Astros pitcher and froze each shot at the release point of the ball out of the pitcher’s hand. One shot showed a 2-seam grip and the other shot showed a 4-seam grip. The color analyst described each grip and explained the movement of the ball for each grip. Excellent use of the video with the “freeze” shot coupled with expert analysis made for a very rewarding moment on the telecast.
There was a bench clearing incident during the game.
There is nothing new about a bench clearing incident in a baseball game. We have all seen them and rarely are there punches thrown. Just like in today’s game, there were a few shoves and a few words but that was about it.
Where our broadcast team excelled in this “incident” was the fact that we were prepared for it. There was some bad blood brewing between these two clubs dating from the second week of the season and from yesterday’s game. The camera operators on our production team were right on during the fracas. We captured straight on face shots of the primary combatants of the incident during the incident – shots that captured the moment as good as possible. But the best was yet to come. The tight centerfield operator (camera 6) and the left field corner camera operator (camera 1) both stayed with the Astros’ pitcher in the dugout after the inning was over. He was very upset and kept yapping and yapping. We found out at the start of the following half inning that he was being replaced by a reliever. Because of the diligence of these camera operators, the viewers at home saw a moment during the game that the people present in the ball park did not see.
Capturing rare moments during a baseball game/telecast occur with good planning, hard work, and sometimes with a little luck.
We planned the umpire’s shot, our camera operators do not stop working between innings, our announce team’s comments on the importance of practice for major league baseball players really put a ribbon on our video package of these players working on fundamentals.
When a baseball TV production team plans ahead and works hard, it just proves you don’t have to be lucky to be good.