My brother-in-law Mike Souhrada is the manager of the El Paso Titans varsity baseball team. My nephew Jared Souhrada is his assistant coach. I took the afternoon off and drove down to Eureka to see Mike's Titans take on Tremont on Thursday afternoon.
Tremont's Turks (as is turkeys the animals, as opposed to people from Turkey) jumped out to an early lead on the Titans' star pitcher and University of Illinois recruit Nathan Lavender. Nathan gave up three in the first and one in the third. After that, he settled down but it was too late. The Titans could not get anything going against the Turks and were eliminated from the IHSA 2A playoffs 4-0.
As for photographs, it was a clear, warm and sunny day with the sun low in the sky at the 4:30 start. The Eureka College field was in good shape except for the infield grass. The grass was so long that high hard hit ground balls barely made it to the infielders. High school and college baseball diamonds don't have spots for photographers. Generally, the only clean look one gets at a high school filed is either from a hole in the netting, an open doorway, actually standing on the field or inside a dugout. This day I had to stand in the dugout. It was not a bad spot but far from ideal with respect to the direction of the sunlight.
I shot a high shutter speed at f2.8 most of the time with an ISO between 200-400. The photos came out pretty crisp. I did not have my 300mm lens so I shot the whole game with my trusty 70-200mm, f2.8. I had to crop in on most of the photos. The next day baseball game I do I am going to go much higher on the shutter speed and ISO. I want to see how that works.
Hope you like the shots.
