“You look forward to Opening Day like a birthday party when you’re a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.” – Joe DiMaggio

Chapter I: Opening Week

When we last left off in the blog, I was talking about how I wanted to start a Summer of Baseball blog¹. Well after a long winter, March finally arrived. And the month of March brought something special: Opening Week in baseball. This meant it was time to plan my first road trip.

While there are over 100 minor league teams across baseball, they don’t all start in March. Only Major League Baseball and Triple-A are the ones playing late in the month². This meant that there were actually only a handful of games to choose from and plan around.

And to be honest, picking the first game to go to was pretty easy. See, I’m a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The team has one of the best minor league systems in baseball, which meant that seeing some of their top prospects was highly appealing. And it just so happens that the Pirates Triple-A affiliate is the Indianapolis Indians³. I figured, what better game to kick of the Summer of Baseball⁴ than seeing an affiliate of my favorite baseball team at Victory Field in Indianapolis, Indiana.

But the thing about this project is I didn’t really know what it was going to look like. Meaning, I had the idea of what I wanted to do: start a blog about going to baseball games. But I didn’t know exactly what it would look like. Would it just be focused on baseball? What other things could I do? Well shortly before the trip, I thought it’d be really fun to also keep score at all the games I go to. Like a fun little personal document from each ballpark. So I picked up a scorebook from the Numbers Game and now I had a plan.

All that was left was actually going.

Chapter II: Getting to Indy

I had never been to Indianapolis before, and I’ve barely even been to the state of Indiana. I’d be driving from Ohio, so driving into the capital city from the Ohio side would be a lot of fun, even if I was driving into the unknown⁵.

The city was hosting the Final Four the next weekend, but thankfully when I went it was a pretty relaxing drive into downtown. Parking was straightforward and I was able to easily find a spot in a parking garage not far from the stadium.

Since I had some time⁶, I decided to take the long way to the stadium. There was a city park with some art installations nearby, so I walked down and got what turned out to be one of my favorite photos from the trip. This shot of some people walking around the water:

And I guess at this point I should mention the camera I brought. It’s a Yashica Electro 35, which is one of the most beautiful rangefinder film cameras ever made⁷. The film in the camera for this trip was Kodak Portra 400, a classic film stock that pairs very well with the Yashica. I figure the 400 speed film would work for the late afternoon game time, while still giving me some flexibility in case of any heavy shadow areas.

Eventually, I made it to the stadium. And the funny thing is, while getting to the stadium and parking was super easy for me, it was not easy for bus drivers⁸. I guess there was some early prep for the week coming up, and all the busses were essentially gridlocked trying to get to the hotels. You know when you’re in a traffic jam and you think to yourself, “I could probably walk there faster”? It kinda felt like that when I was walking to the stadium.

But at long last, I made it to the stadium. The Summer of Baseball had begun.

Chapter III: A Cold Day at the Ballpark

Remember at the beginning of this post that I mentioned it was early March? Well, it was so cold that day that it felt like it was barely above freezing⁹. Thankfully the first pitch was at 4:05, so us fans didn’t have to worry about the sun going down.

Walking in the gate, the team has one of my favorite things I’ve seen so far in my travels. They had a jazz brass band playing! I had the fortune of seeing a few more games since I went to this Indians game, and let me tell you, this band is still one of the absolute coolest things I’ve seen at a park. They were AWESOME. Absolutely set the mood to enjoy a day at the park. Shout out to the band, and it makes Victory Field a must visit.¹⁰

The stadium itself is tucked into downtown Indianapolis and you can see the skyline in the outfield, including the Marriott hotel that towers over the outfield. Other hotels and buildings dot the landscape, with most of the visible from the field. It gives this major league vibe to the park and it really works.

With that said, what I never really knew¹¹ before being in the park, is how close Lucas Oil Stadium is to Victory Field¹². It almost feels like the two stadiums could be connected.

The concourse is tucked underneath the upper levels of the stadium, but you can always see the field no matter where you walk. It never felt cramped, and there were plenty of food and dessert choices if one so chooses.

The other thing I loved about the ballpark was the marquee of the starting lineups. As someone who was going to keep score, I loved that I could take my time and write out the starting lineups for each team. Even though it was my first game of this project, Indy really made me happy about my “get there an hour beforehand” rule, as there was so much to see and check out before the game. If you are going to a game at Victory Field, try to avoid getting there 5-10 minutes before first pitch¹³ so you can have enough time to walk around the park, soak in the atmosphere, and really enjoy what Indianapolis has done with their park.

All in all, the pregame walk around was A+ in my book, which meant it was time to find my seat and actually watch the game.

Chapter IV: The Game & the Photos

My seats were down the third base side and they were thankfully in the sun¹⁴. I sat next to a lovely family and really, having a conversation at the ballpark on a beautiful sunny day is among the best experiences you can have.

The Indians were playing the St. Paul Saints, who are the Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. The highlight of the game was the fact that the #1 prospect in baseball Konnor Griffin was still in the minors at this point¹⁵. When I planned the trip, Spring Training was still going on and it wasn’t official yet whether Griffin was going to make the Opening Day roster for the Pirates. Thankfully for us in attendance, he was still in Indianapolis.¹⁶ He ended up going 2 for 3 that day with 2 walks, an RBI, and a run scored.

The game ended up with a 9-7 victory for the Saints and it was an offensive show. There were only two innings in which neither team scored and the other seven innings all had multiple runs scored. The teams also combined for 26 hits.

As for how the photos came out, I was super happy with both the film stock and the camera¹⁷. The combination gave the perfect analog/vintage look that I was going for. There were issues, but it was more of user error than anything with the equipment. Because this was my first game of the project, it was always going to be an experiment. I wouldn’t know my workflow until I actually went to a game and made a bunch of mistakes.

For example, I didn’t take enough photos of the concourse areas. It would’ve really added to the set if I had more of the people attending the game and enjoying some of the activities. Plus, it would’ve broken up some of the shots of the field. And speaking of which…

I felt like I took too many shots of the field during warmups. Meaning there was no in-game action to bring interest to the photos or in some cases, the lack of in-game action actually subtracted from the photos. In the future, I’m making sure to do the bulk of the field photos during live game action.

I will say, I did take definitely my favorite shot of the trip and it’s been one of my favorites of any I’ve taken so far. This one of the game mid-pitch, which I’m using as the front cover of this post:

I love the soft colors, with both the shadow area and sunlit areas nicely exposed. I had some issues with exposing for either the shadow or highlights in other photos, and since I wouldn’t know until I got the photos back whether I did it right or not, I was happy I at least got a keeper with this one. This one is the the foundation for how I want to do the bulk of my work in the future.

And all this led me to come up with a rule after this game: the photos takes precedence over all else. So if I see something cool in the park that I would like to document, like a beautiful lighting sitatuion, drop everything and go take a photo of it.¹⁸

Chapter V: Final Thoughts

The last thing I’ll talk about is my borderline addiction¹⁹ to collecting baseball hats. I have specific rules on which hats to buy²⁰, and I couldn’t wait to see the hats in the team store. The Indians had just unveiled a new logo and branding over the course of the offseason, and that meant new hats to check out.

After much deliberation, I eventually settled on their new road cap with the stylized “I” on it. I’ve got a lot of crazy caps from minor league teams, so I went with the road cap to give my collection something that was a little more subdued.

All in all, as a kick off to the Summer of Baseball, I could not ask for a better ballpark than Victory Field. The surrounding area, the pregame atmosphere, and the ballpark itself were all top quality. If you are considering going to games, checking out Indianapolis and Victory Field is a worthy addition to any road trip.

__________________________________

1. The Cliff Notes version: I’m going to try and go to a bunch of different minor leagues games this summer and take photos with my 35mm cameras. ↩︎
2. Almost all the Double-A, High-A and Single-A teams start in early April ↩︎
3. I was trying to build a little tension with what the first game of the season was going to be, but the title of the blog kinda defeated that purpose. ↩︎
4. I’m stretching the limits of “Summer” here in the title, since late March is barely out of the winter months. ↩︎
5. This sentence might’ve been a bit too dramatic. It’s just a simple interstate drive. ↩︎
6. My goal for each game is to get to the stadium an hour from first pitch. Allows me to take my time getting into the stadium, while also being able to walk around the grounds without needing to rush to find my seat. ↩︎
7. Sadly I think the light seals are failing on the camera. On this roll and a couple of others I had some pretty intense light leaks. I’ve taken it to some other games since this one, but I didn’t know about the light leaks until I got all the rolls developed. ↩︎
8. They probably wouldn’t find it too funny. ↩︎
9. I went to the box score from the game to double check, and it was 48 degrees at the time of the first pitch. It definitely felt colder than that. ↩︎
10. While I write these blogs afterwards of course, I wanted to make sure (or at least try) to get across how cool this band was for setting the atmosphere. ↩︎
11. I research a lot about the different cities I go to, especially the area the stadium is in and things I may want to go see. But I actually don’t do any for the stadium itself. A lot of the fun in going to the different ballparks is the excitement of not knowing what to expect. ↩︎
12. Lucas Oil is where the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts play. Funny thing is that it’s also where the Final Four was being held that next week. So the basketball tournament was held at the football stadium, even though the city has an NBA team already. As Mr. Ollivander would say, curious indeed. ↩︎
13. For a bit of foreshadowing, there are a few games in upcoming blogs where I would most definitely NOT be getting to a ballpark an hour beforehand. ↩︎
14. Growing up in the south, anything below 50 degrees might as well be Arctic temperatures. ↩︎
15. I concede the fact that Detroit Tiger fans can make the argument that Kevin McGonigle is/was actually the top prospect in baseball. ↩︎
16. Griffin got promoted to The Show just a few days after this game. ↩︎
17. Outside of the light leaks of course. ↩︎
18. I’m being dramatic again but really I just mean I’ll stop keeping score to go take a photo. ↩︎
19. It’s not borderline by the way, it’s a full on addiction. ↩︎
20. There are three rules to buying a cap. Number 1: it has to be an authentic New Era Cap. Number 2: it has to be a fitted cap. And Number 3: it has to be an actual cap they wear on the field. No fashion caps allowed. ↩︎