Beyond here be the lair of dragons...

[LWW]

My man Heater...

LWW

 

[LWW]

and his significant other Gem...

LWW

 

[LWW]

arrived Thursday night for opening day, doing a surfboard routine...

LWW

 

[LWW]

and of course Heater had to give his pre game analysis for those at home watching on TV...the only A ball level franchise with a TV contract...and to the 9,016 in paid attendance at a ballpark which seats 7,255...since it's 1st opening day in 2000 they have now had well over 400 consecutive sellouts.

LWW

 

[LWW]

And then the obligatory first pitch from the President of 5/3 bank which funded the building of the field.

Here in Dayton we were the largest city in America without a pro baseball team at some level, and the city stalled on building a stadium for decades convinced it would never work.

Locally 5/3 bank went from a tiny presence with a couple of local branchs to the dominant bank in town. They built in and people came.

LWW

 

[LWW]

And then the real thing.

LWW

 

[LWW]

The new video fire walls in the outfield are pretty cool also.

LWW

 

[LWW]

The Dragon Vision...

and some outside signage...

and one firework shot.

LWW

 

[LWW]

Being that we are next door to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base we get the honor guard in quite often, and they can put on a powerful and touching presentation in silence...

followed by the winner of a local contest who did a beautiful rendition of The Star Spangled Banner.

LWW

 

[LWW]

Heater and Gem fire up the crowd before the 1st pitch.

LWW

 

[LWW]

The between innings limbo contest was funny also.

LWW

 

[LWW]

And the pitch on the way in...

and on the way back out.

LWW

 

[LWW]

Some of these had to be hand held at 1/60 with a 80-200mm f2.8 Nikkor, mostly shot at 200mm, and a D50 body on a very damp drizzly overcast miserable weather night so I apologize for some being not as tack sharp as I would like.

That being said opening day has become a quick tradition here in town.

Thanks for viewing.

LWW

 

[duncanp]

cant you put them all in one post?

any way nice use of DoF thoughout and i think this needs a warning for our friends on 56K..

 

[MommyOf4Boys]

I must agree with Duncan. They are so large and scrolling through this page was starting to get where it was just not worth it. If you put all of your photos into one post, it really makes it easier on the viewer.
With that said, i really like the shooting firework photo.