Oklahoma 5A Baseball State Championship - #21
It’s not very often in life that you meet someone that is a step above most everyone else. On Saturday I had the opportunity to shoot some shots at the Oklahoma 5A Baseball State Championship game at the Chickasaw Ballpark in Bricktown - Oklahoma City. My shoot consisted of shooting almost 100% shots of #21. A little backstory…. Our family has known his family since he and my son played baseball together back when they were about 4 years old. Today the two of them graduated high school so for 14+ years I have been around #21. He is truly a special young man and a heck of a baseball player and will be playing baseball in college. He and my son are a lot alike. Both are truly amazing young men and I am proud to be the dad to one and a friend to the other (#21). So….. like I said earlier this was the state championship for 5A baseball and #21 was ready. He played with heart and watching him you can tell that he is the leader of the team. All I can say is he in amazing.
My favorite shot of the day was after the final out and #21 and his team had lost the game. He was on third base ready to come home when the last out happened. By luck I was in the perfect position waiting for a shot down the third base line and he crouched down and put his head down in defeat with no one around him. The opposing fans were in the crowd cheering their team on and their state championship and all I could do was watch #21 and my heart broke for him. He left it all out on the field. He sat there by himself for what seemed like 30 seconds and then he picked himself up, went to his teammates and put on his leader hat again.
Not the ending we all wanted but truly a pleasure to have the opportunity to photograph him. He is special to say the least.
Enjoy the shots…
