Home Opener

The home opener is always special.
It is always a special game for the players and fans.
It is always a special telecast for the TV crew.
Busch Stadium is a sea of red!
The clydesdales ring the field.
The living Cardinals Hall-of-Famers ride in vehicles around the warning track. Seeing Stan The Man Musial is especially exciting to all baseball fans.
The excitement and energy in the ballpark is very infectious during the team motorcade and player introductions.
The game begins and this energy seems to build with every pitch.
The Cardinals scored in the top of the 1st inning and the crowd went wild.
The attendance was 46,918 which is the largest regular season crowd in the history of Busch Stadium II.
Albert Pujols hit a 3-run bomb in the 3rd inning and I don't think I have ever heard Busch Stadium so loud.
Adam Wainwright pitched 8 innings of shutout baseball allowing 6 hits with 1 walk and 7 strikeouts. The ovation he received when he walked off the field after the top of the 8th inning was thunderous.
The 1-2-3 hitters for the Cardinals went 8-11 with 5 runs and 5 rbi.
Ok, enough with the game summary.
Let's talk about the telecast.
In my book, Cutting The Game, (www.cuttingthegame.com) I talk about the beauty of working at home with a regular crew. I write about how the flow of the home show is so much smoother than a road telecast because of the familiarity of the crew with the TV production team. The camera operators with the director and the tape room with the producer work so well together on the home show because of this "comfort zone".
I met with the camera operators before the game and told them how excited I was to be doing baseball with them again. I also told them that there would be NO camera meeting because we had all worked together for so long that I believed a camera meeting was not necessary. I think this raised the confidence level of this extremely talented camera crew and I also firmly believe that this comment also added to the comfort level between myself and the camera operators.
The replay sequences and video packages proved that this comfort level was also evident between the producer and the tape room
This familiarity and comfort level is also evident with our audio engineer. His mix was terrific.
Our X-Mo camera (super slo-mo) looked better than it ever has in the past 3 seasons. I thank our video operator for his fine work. In a partly cloudy day, the sun can play some mean tricks on the video operator as he "shades" the cameras and today was no different. Great job!
The telecast was a good, solid show.
I believe that our TV crew, from top to bottom, fed off the electric energy of Busch Stadium and delivered one of our better telecasts in the past few seasons.
Fitting for such a special day.