The blogging photographer

The referee held the ball while waiting
for the chain gang to bring the markers
to measure to see if the offense
had earned a first down.

I photographed the recent California Lutheran University football game against the University of La Verne. The game was played at La Verne or I would have been calling the game on CLU’s CLUtube internet live streaming site.

            The images here are from that game. CLU and La Verne are NCAA Division III schools and they play in the SCIAC conference here in Southern California. The games are typically a lot of fun to watch and this one was really fun for CLU fans. The Kingsmen clobbered the Leopards.

The playing surface at La Verne is natural grass. At the end
of a long game on a hot day, things get a little dusty. I
like the look when mixed in with the intensity of the
game action.

            The shoot provided some challenges. The day was very sunny and the sun was directly in my lens for half the game. By that I mean the sun was behind the same end zone all game long. The sun moved from one sideline to the other, but it remained behind the same end zone and I had to overcome that issue for four quarters. There were times during the game when the field position of the line of scrimmage made shooting pointless.

            I could have been more productive working the La Verne sideline, especially during the second half, but I’m not comfortable doing that. I was wearing a CLU baseball cap and I did not feel it was appropriate for me to stand on the La Verne sideline when I was obviously associated somehow with the visitors. Had I been on assignment for a newspaper, I would have been wearing a different cap and might have changed sidelines.

The body language during a football game tells a
story all its own.

            I recommend you catch a small college or Division III game at your first opportunity. The games are a lot of fun and the ticket prices, where they charge anything at all, are family friendly. I have found the people to be very welcoming, especially among the SCIAC members.

            Day time football is a blast for a photographer. I used a fast shutter speed, mostly about 1/1,600^th of a second. Next time I’ll drop the shutter speed and play with the f-stops a little in order to blur the background a bit. The La Verne stadium is so open that you can end up with a parking lot in the background unless you are careful. Mark that as another lesson learned by your blogging photographer.

A runner following his blockers.

            I’ve posted a few images here from the game and I hope you enjoy them. You can read more about CLU’s football team (ranked 12^th in the country this week) at CLUsports.com. I’ll have more images from the game up on http://www.speedylee.com/ in a few days. I hope you enjoy the images I have displayed here.

            Thanks for reading.

RIP Dan Wheldon

Our thoughts are with the family and friends of Dan Wheldon, the IndyCar driver who died in Las Vegas over weekend.

Wheldon won the Indianapolis 500 earlier this year but died Sunday after crashing during a race.

Wheldon leaves a wife and two young children. He was 33.

Update!!!

If you look back a few blogs, you’ll see one I wrote about Anthony Calvillo, the quarterback for the Montreal Allouettes of the Canadian Football League. Calvillo broke pro football’s all time record for passing yards over the weekend.

Calvillo, who grew up in California and played junior college ball before moving on to Utah State and then the CFL, surpassed the mark held by Damon Allen over the weekend. Allen is another American who spent his professional football career in Canada and thrived.

Calvillo’s career record is now 72,381 yards, but don’t bother to memorize that figure. He’ll add to it with his next completion. The record-breaker was a 50-yard bomb to Jamel Richardson, Calvillo’s favorite target in recent seasons.

And Calvillo is not slowing down at age 39. His touchdown-to-interception ratio at this point in the season is 28-4. Remarkable.

Thanks for reading.

Taking it one blog at a time

I don’t know exactly what California Lutheran University football coach Ben McEnroe told his team during the halftime of the Kingsmen game against the University of Redlands Saturday. Don’t know, for sure, the precise wording he used to address his players in the locker room.

But whatever McEnroe said, I wish he could bottle it, seal it and send it to corporate America. The man knows something about comebacks.

The Kingsmen went into the game ranked 20^th among NCAA Division III schools. They played host to the 13^th-ranked Bulldogs, CLU’s arch rivals. The game was the first ever held at the new William Rolland Stadium on campus at CLU. Fans jammed the place (including a good number of spirited Redlands fans who made the trip to see the game).

Big crowd for a big game in a new stadium between two ranked teams that are rivals to begin with: Wow, what atmosphere.

And it opened with a thud. Redlands raced to a 17-0 lead and then, in the final minute of the second quarter, scored a touchdown to make the score 24-0.

I had the play-by-play on CLU’s online coverage (www.clutube.com), working with CLU students David Brown (color) and Nikki Fay (sideline). Other CLU students worked the cameras.

Fay interviewed McEnroe as he came on the field to start the second half. The coach talked about winning one play at a time, a standard thing to say.

Are you reading, corporate America? One play at a time. Work out how this applies to you.

And, building on the theme of one play at a time, the Kingsmen came back and won, 28-24. They scored the winning touchdown with 16 seconds remaining and had to intercept a Hail Mary pass in the end zone on the last play to wrap the win up.

One play at a time. CLU finished the first half with 87 total yards of offense and finished the game with 434. Redlands had 307 yards in their explosive first half, but CLU’s defense allowed just 63 total yards in the second half.

One play at a time. CLU managed just three first downs in the first half and finished with 23. Redlands’ offense, led by an outstanding quarterback named Chad Hurst, compiled 13 first downs in the first half but finished the game with 17.

Win this thing one play at a time: CLU quarterback Jake Laudenslayer is not known as a running quarterback, but he had a big run for a first down on the final drive and scored the go-ahead touchdown on a quarterback sneak.

The final CLU drive started at the Kingsmen 3-yard line. I remember calling it “First and 97,” which was not in keeping with the one-play-at-a-time mantra, but it summed up the situation pretty well.

After the final play, the CLU students rushed onto the field (possibly thinking they’d take it one celebration at a time, I’m not sure) as I stood at my announcing position. I tried to make sense of it all for the viewers but I’m not sure I did so.

Guess I should have taken it one sentence at a time. I’ll work on that.

CLU hosts Whittier next Saturday at 1 p.m. You can catch the game on CLUtube.com. Until then, I hope you have a good week, taking it one day at a time.

Thanks for reading.

Of course it's relevant!

I have been asked several times why I believe the study of the American Civil War is really relevant to Americans today. The questioners usually emphasize that the war happened 150 years ago and like to challenge my idea that history can teach us if we listen.

It would be easy to lean on the old (and accurate) lecture about the importance of learning from the past. That’s what I was told when I was a kid and it is as true now as it was when my parents recited that same lecture to me. There are lessons to be learned from the study of history.

Every grade school student has to study history sooner or later, but nobody ever seems to learn from it.

But, and here I return to the original premise of the blog, I have a very personal reason for studying the Civil War. The reasoning is so flawless that I am amazed that nobody else has thought of this before.

The reasoning here is a wad of stunning simplicity: Had the Civil War concluded differently in any way than the way it did, I would not have been born.

We will not debate here whether a SpeedyLee-less world would be a bad thing or not, although I am sure you can understand that my point of view is clear on the matter.

All of us have 16 great, great grandparents. Of the 16, eight must be great, great grandfathers. Check your biology books. You’ll see it’s true. You’ll also see that, without any one of your eight great, great grandfathers, you wouldn’t be here. That’s bad news because I’d hate to lose your readership.

Statistics in hand, we now turn to genealogy. Of my eight great, great grandfathers, three served in the military during the Civil War. All three survived the war, though two suffered severe wounds.

Further, one of my parents was born in the Deep South, a former Confederate state. For a variety of reasons that are unimportant here, it is reasonable to assume that my parents would not have met if the Confederate states had won independence from the Union.

I would challenge anyone that doubts the value of the continued study of the Civil War to do a simple self test: Check into your own family history. Discover whether you have an ancestor that fought in the Civil War. How might your family tree have changed with a different ending to the war?

And when you finish with all that, ask yourself if the study of the American Civil War is relevant today.

Thanks for reading.

The quickest way I know to start an argument is...

Kobe Bryant wouldn’t even make the starting lineup of my all-time Los Angeles Lakers team. He’s a great player, sure, and I suspect he’ll be elected into the pro basketball hall of fame as soon as he’s eligible. But my all-time Lakers team has two guys ahead of Bryant who made every player around them better.

The Lakers franchise has had a lot of championship teams and great players make champions. But the greatest Laker of them all never took the court for the club, yet went decades without missing a game. Chick Hearn, the play-by-play man, was the best there ever was at what he did. Hearn introduced the game to Los Angeles and explained it to generations of listeners. Simply a great communicator.

There is a statue of Hearn at the Staples Center. How many announcers get statues? That’s what he meant to the franchise. He’s gone now but I still miss the sound of his voice during basketball season. The Lakers will never sound the same to me. Heck, the game will never sound the same.

My point guard? No question about it, Magic Johnson. Best basketball player I ever saw, regardless of position. He lifted the players around him, made them better. They had to be alert when Magic had the ball because you never knew when the next sensational pass might be coming your way. The first time I saw him in person was during his rookie year. The Lakers were playing the Clippers when the Clippers still played in San Diego. I remember a fast breaking, one-handed push pass from half court. Johnson hit a streaking teammate for a layup and I had to admit the hype surrounding Magic might have been accurate.

The off guard on this mythical team is Jerry West. No room for argument here. Great defensive player, great clutch performer. Great scorer. West was so good, the NBA emblem is designed after him.

Elgin Baylor makes this team as the three spot, the small forward. I had a hard time with this spot because I wanted to put James Worthy here. But Baylor gets the nod.

The big forward is a tough spot to choose. I thought about cheating and dropping George Mikan’s name in this spot. Mikan is a Hall of Famer, a center when the Lakers won championships as the Minneapolis Lakers. He was such a tremendous player that I suspect he’d have been an outstanding power forward had he played in the current era. But I couldn’t cheat, so I had to go with a very different kind of player.

My power forward is Kurt Rambis. For hustle, selflessness and grit you can’t beat Rambis. Fans loved him. On this team, scoring is not an issue. Rambis would help with rebounding and attitude.

The post spot was the toughest call on the team. Most of the best postmen of all time have played for the Lakers and my favorite is Wilt Chamberlain. But, much as I liked watching Wilt play, I can’t choose him over Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Jabbar is the greatest scorer in the history of the game, played well on defense and rebounded efficiently. On top of that, when he played with Magic, Jabbar was simply brilliant at firing up the fast break with outlet passes.

So I’d start Johnson, West, Baylor, Rambis and Jabbar. The bench players are below:

Guards: Kobe Bryant, Derek Fisher, Gail Goodrich

Forwards: James Worthy, Jamal Wilks, Michael Cooper

Center: Chamberlain, Mikan

I’d want Pat Riley to be the coach, with all due respect to Phil Jackson. Riley’s offense would work best with the team I have listed here.

West would be the general manager. Jerry Buss would be the owner. And Chick Hearn would call the play-by-play.

It starts with a 'T', and it rhymes with bubble

            I have a special talent for getting myself in trouble.

No applause, please.

Take, for example, the small matter of family birthdays. I have been out of town on my wife’s birthday for the last 11 years. The kids are grown and gone so, except for our dog and our cat (the terrorist), my wife has been home, alone on her last 11 birthdays. There were six years, run consecutively, when I wasn’t home for either kid’s birthday.

My own birthday? Not lately.

My mother recently celebrated her 80^th birthday. I called from half a continent away to wish her well. I live an hour’s drive from Mom, but I wasn’t even in the same time zone on her birthday this year.

So you can readily ascertain that, when it comes to getting in trouble, I have a head start on all of you. At dawn on any given day, I’m pretty much already in trouble.

I have learned to live with guilt. I’m in trouble, it’s my fault, I know it, and I know I need to do something in order to get out of the dog house. Even when I am not in any specific trouble, I work under the assumption that I am or soon will be on my way to the principal’s office.

Again.

Guilt is a powerful motivator. Let us examine, as evidence, my annual absence at the time of my wife’s birthday. My absence is work-related because I work for Goodyear Racing and I have to work at an NHRA drag race over the same weekend every year. Amy’s birthday is right around that time and I am simply never home that weekend. Can’t be.

Now, my wife Amy is one of the great people on this planet. She deserves better than to be alone on her birthday. I know it and I try to be proactive. We celebrate her birthday before I leave town. I always try to find a nice gift, something she wants, and take her out for a nice dinner.

The last two years, I have sent emails with photos (2010) and videos (2011) of people at the races wishing her a happy birthday. I’m in deep, deep trouble next year because I’m out of new ideas.

            Amy and I have been married for 25 years and I have to say that I’m the happiest guy you’ll meet. I’m a lucky man. I constantly pay attention to how lucky I am. Otherwise, I’d be in more trouble than usual.

            Thanks for reading. I’ll try to stay out of trouble for a while.