Images of 2010

August 8, 2010

It's always a sad day when the final out of the Nebraska Legion baseball season is made.  For the 2010 season, that day came yesterday, August 7th, 143 days after the season began on March 18th.  The oppressive heat of the past few weeks has all but erased memories of how we suffered through the interminable winter of 2009-10 and how we wondered if our glacial ballfields would ever thaw and dry out in time to get the season started.  Miraculously,  winter did eventually release its icy grip, and we can still recall the sparkling green grass and the radiant sunshine that made Millard South's ballpark look like a tropical paradise on that first day of the season. 

And, now, nearly five months later, it's over.  The bats are silent. Uniforms have been checked in. Young men are getting ready to venture out into the world on their own.  The drone of cicadas and the rhythmic beat of distant drum lines tells us that the end of summer is here.  High school baseball is over for another year.

In the final days of the season photographers Bob Irlbeck, Steve Branscombe and I looked back at the thousands of photos we've taken during the 2010 spring and summer seasons.  There were times when taking those photos that our fingers were nearly too cold and too numb to press the shutter.  At other times we were soaked with sweat from head to toe.  Despite those widely varying conditions, the one constant we faced was the challenge of telling the story of Nebraska high school baseball in photos -- the challenge of doing justice to the effort, talent and dedication of the guys on the field. 

Baseball is a beautiful sport -- full of action, intense bursts of energy and precise choreographed moments as well as collisions, comedy, chaos and the unexpected.  And, fortunately, many of our games are played under bright daylight conditions that allow us to capture with high-speed shutters details of the game  that otherwise would be imperceptible to the human eye.  For sports action photographers time is measured in milliseconds -- those microscopic instants during which we sneak a peek into the beating heart of the game.  We hope that the series of frozen moments we've created gives you as much pleasure as we have received in creating it. 

Bob, Steve and I, like the ballplayers, are competitive,  not only competing with one another for the best shots, but also competing against the same kind of lopsided odds that a batter faces.  Just like every swing of the bat does not result in a home run, we know that every release of the shutter will not result in a "killer shot."  The odds are stacked against both.  Like the game of baseball, ours is won with practice, persistent, repetitive effort, a positive attitude and by treating every pitch like a brand new opportunity to succeed, regardless of what happened on the last pitch. 

We would be embarrassed to tell you how many thousands of times we squeezed the trigger to get the 121 images that are displayed in our 2010 retrospective gallery.  Our "batting average" certainly isn't very high.  But, in the end we do feel that we got some timely hits and maybe even knocked one or two out of the park.

BaseballNebraska is very lucky to have the services of talented photographers like Bob and Steve as well as others who volunteer from time to time, such as Chad Ebel, Marita Schroeder and Terry Anderson, all of whom share an intense passion for the game and for capturing unique images to share with you.  We are indebted to them for their hard work and dedication. 

Finally, a note about the selection of the photos in our "Images of 2010" gallery:  please don't be hurt or upset if your ballplayer was not included.  Our selection process was very subjective.   Our goal was to choose photos that had a visual impact and / or that helped tell the story of Nebraska high school and Legion baseball in 2010.  We didn't think so much about who was in the photo as what was happening in the photo.  One could quibble about which photos to include and which to exclude.  Below are our choices. 

Jack Mayfield