Getting The Feel

Today was my fifth and final spring training game for 2016. In fact, these 5 games were my first spring training games in 3 years. It is nice to get the feel of baseball as a director before the grind of the regular season begins. This was a fairly smooth game/telecast as were the first four shows. The most distracting events of the day occurred every time the program monitor went to black. The coord in Houston told us that the signal never went black so we knew it was the monitor. Even so, when the monitor went black which it did frequently, it proved to be a bit distracting even though we knew it was just the monitor. Oh well, on to the regular season. Opening day is April 3rd in Pittsburgh. I'm looking forward to my first blog of the 2016 regular season.

Trust

We had a very smooth telecast today. Our TD is the Royals TD and I have worked with him many times. We pretty much know and trust each other. A director must trust his TD knowing that he or she will be able to execute any command. Every TD should trust the director knowing that the director will never put them into a position where they can't execute a command. We had that trust today. The result of this trust was a smooth telecast. Smooth despite the fact that this was a very sloppy game. Early spring training games are generally sloppy because the established Major League players may only get 1 or 2 at-bats and are replaced by "up and comers". The less the experience the players the sloppier the game. The "up and comers" are surely talented, you just can't trust them to provide a Major League effort.

It Works Out

Another nice clean show today. There was concern early when our new TD told us that he had never worked on a KAYAK switcher before and while it is true that the KAYAK has a "different" logic than other grass valley switchers, the TD did a nice job. I told him not to be nervous - "we will get through this together" and we did. In fact, he truly did a nice job. It is amazing to me how things always seem to work out once we go to air. We could have problems all during pre-pro but those problems usually seem to disappear once we make air. Usually - yes there are times when things seem to never go right but those times are few and far between. Off day tomorrow and that means a delicious bottle of Pino tonight. You can't go wrong with that.

Even Better

The second spring training telecast of the 2016 season was even smoother than the first. The camera operators, the TD, audio, tape, graphics and bug operator all performed in a smooth hard working manner. Just a nice clean show. 2 for 2 in the 2016 season. Will tomorrow's telecast make it 3 for 3? I believe it will.

2016 Game 1

This first telecast of the 2016 season was quite satisfying considering it was a spring training affair. I spoke with a friend and colleague tonight and he asked me how the show went. I told him we had a fairly "clean" telecast. He replied, "You can't expect more than that for a spring training game." He is right. The ballpark, 5 cameras with 4 operators (centerfield is a lockdown), a so-so truck, and many many different players in the game create the situation where all one should hope for is a clean show. We got that today.