Between Innings

In previous blogs, I have written that a goal of our telecast is to air something that the fans in the ballpark do not see. It is very rewarding when we capture something that only the viewers witness.
The best time to capture this goal is between innings.
The best area of the ballpark to succeed in this quest is the dugout.
An aspect of the St. Louis Cardinals TV camera crew that I am most proud is the fact that these operators do not stop working from the time we go to air until we sign off.
Between innings offers every TV baseball crew the greatest opportunity to show our viewers something the fans in the ballpark do not or will not see.
We had a great example of this scenario last night and a couple of instances in tonight's telecast.
Last night, the Cardinals rookie pitcher was taken out of the game. During the following half inning, we shot him in the dugout talking to the catcher. The viewer at home could tell that he was asking questions and eagerly absorbing the answers. He then went to the pitching coach for more schooling.
When we came back from commercial after this sequence of events, he was talking to a veteran starting pitcher. Our color analyst picked up on this and our viewers were treated to a nice piece of baseball television.
Tonight, we captured the Cardinals shortstop trying to grip a bat after taking a bad hop ground ball off his thumb. He was unable to continue in the game and he was quite upset.
Another example of capturing our goal of treating the viewer to something the fan in the stands does not occurred in the visiting Cincinnati Reds dugout. Scott Rolen had returned to the dugout after hitting a homerun and one of his teammates was asking him about the at-bat. Major league baseball players are always trying to learn and this piece of video proved it.
The Reds won the game 9-8 and there were 29 hits.
Yet, despite all this action, the best video of the game occurred between innings.
Congratulations to the camera operators who never stopped working.