http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB4lHAEsSyo

Former St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols has long been a hero to the Dominican community. But in this interview, the baseball great reveals his passion for working with people with Down Syndrome.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ifKHxGuzMw

On January 11, 1973, Major League Baseball owners voted to allow the designated hitter position in the American League. The first designated hitter in baseball history was Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees.

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The MLB’s First Designated Hitter On The Position’s Impact appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdqR6287l-M

Mariano Rivera was a professional baseball player for the New York Yankees from 1995 to 2013. He is considered by many to be the greatest closer of all time. He is a thirteen-time All-Star and a five-time World Series Champion. In this video, Mariano Rivera sits down with Joe Buck of FOX Sports to discuss his career. Of his career in New York, Rivera says: “Being with the New York Yankees has been a blessing. Being part of the city of New York that have huge expectations – Being successful here has been something special.” Of his success on the mound: “Yes, I am a perfectionist. I think i was made for it. I was built for it. It never gets old when those two doors open and I see myself crossing the field. It’s business.”

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Mariano Rivera Reflects On A Storied Career appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE1mIT3CVPc

On October 14, 2003, the Chicago Cubs and the Florida Marlins were playing Game 6 of the National League Championship Series at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Chicago was up 3-2 in the series and had a 3-0 lead in the game going into the 8th inning. That’s when disaster struck. A foul ball hit off the bat of the Marlin’s Luis Castillo was headed towards the stands, with many fans reaching out to try and catch the ball. Spectator Steve Bartman deflected the ball away from outfielder Moises Alou, who likely would have made the catch for the second out of the inning. Instead, the Marlins went on to score 8 runs in the 8th inning, going on to win both Games 6 and 7 for a trip to the World Series. The “Steve Bartman Incident” was seen as the catalyst for the Cubs eventually losing the series. After Game 6, Bartman had to be escorted from the stadium by security. In this video, fans and reporters recall being at Game 6 and seeing the play and its aftermath.

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The Chicago Cubs & The Steve Bartman Incident appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT3_ff5nqkI

According to legend, during the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth pointed to the spot in the stands at Wrigley Field where he would hit the next pitch for a home run. Many people think this never happened, however, his teammates who were there, Joe Sewell and Ed Wells, confirm that Babe Ruth did indeed point to the stands.

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Witnesses Confirm Legend: Babe Ruth Pointed to Centerfield appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shTqUztrAd0

On October 2, 1978, the New York Yankees traveled to Fenway Park to take on the Boston Red Sox in a one game playoff. Both teams had finished the season with ninety-nine wins, and were now playing for the American League East Pennant and a spot in the playoffs. Down 2-0, with two runners on base, shortstop Bucky Dent stepped up to the plate. Yankees Manager Bob Lemon recalls: “I wanted to pinch hit for him but I didn’t have anybody to play. Sometimes when players are injured, sometimes it’s a blessing”. After fouling a ball into his already injured foot, Dent hits a home run over the left field wall to put the Yankees ahead 3-2. Says Dent: “The home run that I hit was the biggest moment in my career”. The Yankees went on to defeat the Red Sox 5-4, ending another exciting chapter of a storied rivalry.

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NY Yankees & Bucky Dent Eliminate The Red Sox appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrPp59wvo54

Former Major League Baseball (MLB) player Pete Rose explains why he bet on the Cincinnati Reds, a team he played for and managed from 1984 to 1989: “I believed in my team so much, I went one step further and I bet on them.” Rose explains how his illegal actions cost him 60 million dollars and jeopardized his son’s career, also in professional baseball. He wishes the gambling never happened and it was just “a bad dream.” On August 24, 1989, Rose accepted permanent ineligibility from baseball and the MLB stopped investigating accusations that Rose had gambled on baseball games, which Rose denied until 2004.

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Pete Rose Gets Honest About Why He Bet on Baseball appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWj0-Xh6Jag

Della Arnold Root, the daughter of Chicago Cubs pitcher Charlie Root, discusses the controversial ball that her father pitched to Babe Ruth in the 1932 World Series that Ruth allegedly predicted he would hit into the stands. According to Root’s daughter, the idea that Ruth had called his shot was never in anybody’s head until it was printed in the papers four days after the game. When asked about it, Ruth said that he “would have been a fool to point on a pitcher like Root.” Nevertheless, this claim haunted Root’s career and, the day before he passed away, he told his daughter that, despite how much he loved the game, he “would only be remembered for something that never happened.”

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The Great Bambino Calls His Shot appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBeV8khJL78

Sports writers and baseball players such as Willie Mays, Tommy Lasorda and Yogi Berra talk about their relationships with Joe Dimaggio. Willie Mays talks about how Dimaggio was his icon as he was growing up playing baseball because he was talented in all parts of the game. Tommy Lasorda calls Dimaggio his hero and talks about how he knew everything about him including all of his statistics. Yogi Berra discusses Dimaggio’s playing style on the field and says that he did everything right and always hustled no matter the situation. Dimaggio played for 13 years with the New York Yankees from 1936 to 1949, but he is best known for his 56 game hitting streak, which still to this day, is the longest hitting streak in MLB history; and his marriage to Marilyn Monroe for less than a year in 1954.

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Dimaggio Was a Hero to Many appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Winslow Townson

“If I had run aimlessly around the perimeter of the blast sites, I would have wasted my time and a chance to really contribute to the story…”

Patriots Day. This Massachusetts holiday celebrates the battles of Lexington and Concord, which were the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. The day always begins with battle re-enactments. Then the Red Sox play an 11AM game, and during and after the game there is the running of the Boston Marathon, a race that first ran in 1897.

There are always lots of photojournalists working in and around Boston on Patriots Day.  This year it fell on Monday April 15, 2013, and it also included celebrating Jackie Robinson Day at Fenway Park and ballparks across the country, with every player wearing number 42.  The Red Sox celebrated a bottom of the ninth walk-off win just eight blocks from the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The real story of the game was not so much the walk-off-win by the home team, but the celebration of the first African American man to play in the Major Leagues. Being assigned to the baseball game that day I knew that being sure to photograph multiple players in one frame wearing the number 42 became the most important picture of the game, and combining it with something patriotic to commemorate Patriots Day would be a bonus.  Well before I even got to the ballpark, I knew that was the picture I needed to make that day.  It was a sunny day, so I did all my cropping and toning underneath my GriffGear laptop screen shade- a quality, durable and compact screen shade made in Australia.

Boston Red Sox players wearing number 42 (2013). Source: Winslow Townson.

Forty-five minutes after the game ended, I was just finishing filing the last of 48 pictures from the game, which included 22 for the wire and 26 out takes which go directly into the archive.

Then, my phone rang.

The Boston Photo Editor told me that “people were maimed” at the finish line of the Marathon and I was directed to head there right away. He said nothing about a bomb, two bombs, or anything else, because initial information was sparse. That is all the information or direction I received from my editor all day. Cell phone’s didn’t work around the ballpark due to the shear volume of calling and texting about the bombings, and around the finish line all cell phone communication was cut for fear of them being used to trigger another bomb.

As I was leaving the ballpark, word on the street began spreading that bombs went off at the finish line. That information, combined with the never-ending sound of the sirens of emergency vehicles, started to paint the picture for me.

The five minutes it took for me to get from Fenway Park to the area of the finish line was enough time to formulate a plan in my mind before I got out of the car. So, just like the baseball game, I arrived near the bombing scene already knowing the kind of picture I needed to look for. Considering the technology of cameras we use today, knowing what the picture is can often be the bigger challenge than actually making the picture.

Without being able to communicate with any editors or photographers, this was the way I thought out what I needed to do: I knew my wire service had several people covering the finish line and I knew that, considering the scope of what had happened, that getting anywhere near the blast sites was not going to happen. But that did not frustrate me. I knew those extremely experienced photographers we had at the finish line were going to take the responsibility for the pictures in and around the blast sites (the scene, the injured, the rescuers, and the responders).

So, instead of running around wildly all over the area taking pictures, my plan was to locate the spot where runners who had finished or who were taken off the course before they finished were meeting up with their loved ones. Surviving the incident was now part of the story.

I left my car with two EOS 1D X’s, with a 400mm lens on one and a 20mm lens on the other (I also carried a flash and several other zoom lenses with me). I was either going to be able to get right amongst the runners or I was going to be kept a ways away, so I planned for both.

As I suspected, the block and a half away from the blast sites were completely off limits to everyone- and the cops were not screwing around. They were very concerned about more secondary explosions, which are a common terrorist tactic. Here was my first chance at a picture, the police directing people away from the blast sites.

One block further away on Boylston Street (which is the street the finish line is on), I found the busses that all the runners were to get on after they finished the race. This was the spot I was looking for. Here I found people holding signs with the names of runners they were looking for, runners being reunited with others they had run with, runners being reunited with family and friends and people basically walking around with that blank, lost look on their face. There were potential pictures everywhere.

Two thoughts crossed my mind at this point: One was that, with pictures everywhere, it kind of reminded me in a weird way of the moment a team wins a championship. In that case there are pictures with different emotions all over the court, field or rink. The problem now was where to find that one storytelling picture that we all look for at the end of any emotional or championship event. My second thought was that this was an obvious place for a secondary explosion, and I needed to be aware of the surroundings. A long row of porta-johns caught my attention as an area to avoid, and I made myself aware of the locations of mailboxes and trashcans. It seemed sad that in this country, I was in a place where I had to be concerned about these things. And it’s just my own belief, but I’ve always felt that no picture is worth dying for.

It was at this point that I was now basically using two lenses; a 20mm and a 70-200mm zoom. I have stopped using a wide-angle zoom because of trouble with edges of the frame or even sides of the frame not being sharp when other parts of the frame were sharp.

Trying to be respectful of the situation and not just shoving my camera in everybody’s face, I spent a large amount of time just looking and listening for a picture. That’s when I heard it–a faint crying, a kind of quiet whimpering. A young, female runner all by herself, walking towards me wrapped up in a foil blanket and crying as she wrapped her arms around to comfort herself. Instead of walking towards her, I let her just walk past me. I shot about 10 frames (and with the EOS 1D X that doesn’t take long) with a 20mm lens as she passed right by me.

Sometimes you don’t know how a picture will feel until you bring it up on your laptop. So, working for a wire service and knowing that a deadline is passing every second, I headed back to my car to transmit with a wireless card.  The picture of the female runner crying on this page just worked, and I’m not ashamed to say that some luck was involved. It worked for me because other runners are walking around in different directions.  An ambulance is leaving the scene, and the man in the red coat is holding flowers that are obviously for a loved one when the marathon was finished.

Woman crying after the Boston bombing (2013). Source: Winslow Townson.

This picture was just one moment in a day of thousands of moments in Boston, but it appeared on over 75 front pages of newspapers around the world the next day, and it was a double truck in “Leading Off” in Sports Illustrated.

As I said before, there was some luck involved when the different features within the picture all lined up at the same .005 of a second. But I also believe that my thought process on approaching this tragedy got me pictures on this day, just as much as my eye or the camera did. Whether you have a whole day or just a few minutes to come up with a plan, it is a necessity to think clearly, assess the situation, and approach a scene at the place where you best fit into the big picture. If I had run aimlessly around the perimeter of the blast sites, I would have wasted my time and a chance to really contribute to the story.

With over 25 years of experience as a photojournalist, this approach has become second nature.

Winslow can be reached for questions or comments at wwtownson@aol.com; Visit his web site here. 

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[Text] Photojournalist on Capturing Mass Tragedy in a Moment’s Notice appeared first on Witnify.