Even though the baseball season has already started there is nothing like a home opener. It has such a different feel to it, almost like the playoffs in so many ways. I really wanted to go to opening day as I have for the past 5 years but I wasn’t able to get tickets till my business partner called me and said he was given a couple of great seats by our Budweiser Rep. I jumped on the chance and I was off to opening day.
The atmosphere was great, the fans were out in their jersey’s and hats, and overall it was a perfect afternoon for baseball. Wandy Rodriguez was on the mound for the Astros against our Central Division rival the St. Louis Cardinals. This game turned out to be an amazing pitchers duel between Wandy “Jeckyl & Hyde” Rodriguez and Todd Wellemeyer.
Wellemeyer pitched into the 6th inning striking out 7 Astros batters in the process. The 7th inning however was a different ball game. Lance Berkman came up to bad and drove a rocket into right center field for the first score of the night by any team. Immediatly following that rocket shot, Carlos Lee not to be outdone, Hit a moon shot into the Crawford boxesto give the Astros a 2-0 Lead.
K. Jiminez came in for Wellemeyer in the 8th inning only to give up a lead off Home run to J.R Towles giving the Astros the 3-0 advantage after 8. Doug Brocail came in and pitched a beautiful 2/3 rd of an inning spelling Wandy who had an amazing day.
Fast forward to the top of the 9th and closer Jose Valverde was brought on to put the red birds away. Unfortunately he did his best Brad Lidge impression and gave up 3 runs and was bailed out by Miguel Tejada on a diving play to end the inning and control the damage.
In the bottom of the 9th Carlos Lee led off with a single and was subbed out for a pinch runner with Miguel Tejada coming up to bat. The runner wouldn’t be needed as Tejada followed up his great glove work with a towering game winning homerun to give the Astros the win in amazing fashion.
This year by far was the best opening day game in all the years I can remember. It had all the excitement you could ask for in the first game at home.
I made sure to take the SLR with me and get some great pictures to do some HDR work with. I took a 300mm lens with me as well to get those great close up shots during the game. I went ahead and posted a few of the pictures from the game below and when I get all of them done I will put them in here as well. All the pictures were taken in RAW format and edited with Photomatix Pro to create the stunning HDR images you see below.
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