“Oh, You Meant That Matt Cain!”

 

Matt Cain pitching against the Texas Rangers
in the 2010 World Series.

Many of you have asked me (and when I say "many of you," I mean, well, one of you) if I was lucky enough to be photographing the 22^nd perfect game in modern Major League Baseball history on Wednesday night, when San Francisco Gigantes' hurler Matt Cain dazzled the baseball world by shutting down the Houston Astroglides.

To this well-meaning query, I say, "Thank you for asking. Next question."

The sorry truth is that not only was I not at the game, no photographer from [The Big Newspaper Company] was present at AT&Tyrannical Park to record the first perfect game in the team's history, going back to 1883!

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of baseball's perfect game, and how it's more coveted than even the storied "no-hitter," in which a pitcher or pitchers prevents the opposition from reaching base by means of hitting safely; in a perfect game, a single pitcher faces 27 batters, and retires all of them. That means: no walks, no errors, no hit batsmen. There's obviously an element of luck as well as talent at work, and that's why, in the last 113 seasons, over tens of thousands of games, there have been only 22 perfect ones.

Look at it this way: since Gigantes started playing baseball, there have been more U.S. Presidents than perfect games.

So sure, you'd think that somebody – and by somebody, I'm thinking of that writer-type person who's being paid to sit in the press box and pay attention to the game – would have noticed by, say, the sixth or seventh inning, that the Astroglides were still awaiting their first baserunner of any kind. Or, failing that, maybe an editor, any editor, would have said, while watching the game on TV, "Geez, that's a lotta zeroes up there. Has that ever happened before?"

But no. No one who could have made a difference chose to make a difference, until it was too late to make a difference. When I idly checked my TimeSuckBook news feed, and saw a friend's cryptic status update – "Sshh! Check out the Giants game!" – I suspected something unusual was happening. But then again, even if some alert sports person had called me and said, "Get thee to the City by the Bay, Cain is slaying Abel (Maldonado)!" I could not have gone – after all, I was in the middle of editing some very important high school graduation pictures.

By the time I flipped on the TV and saw the situation, there were two outs in the top of the 8^th inning. I'd have needed a Medevac chopper to make it to the park in time for the final out.

Of course, I should point out that there was a curious dearth of photographers at the game, possibly explained by: a midweek, night game against a last-place, out-of-division team, combined with the pending first round of the U.S. Open at San Francisco's Olympic Club. Only Getty Images and the Associated Press had photographers covering, and while they did a fine job, it's sad to think that the San Francisco Comical had to depend on wire photos for a game that happened one mile from their front door.
 

Oakland's Dallas Braden exults after the final out of his perfect game
in May 2010.


On the amazing day (pictured here) when I was among those lucky photogs who shot the 19^th perfecto, on May 9, 2010 at the Woe.Is.Me Coliseum, it seemed like shooters were just coming out the dugouts by the eighth inning. The place was overrun with photographers by the ninth inning. It must have seemed exceedingly strange to those covering the game Wednesday night that they were the only folks with cameras…


Epilogue: on Thursday morning, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but only vague assurances that this will never happen again. Of course, perfect games don't happen on a schedule. The Gigantes waited 128 years for their first; we may all be dust by the time they get another.

The Long Arm of the Law (Or How I Learned to Forget About the First Amendment, Public Property, Equal Access, etc.)



Federal law enforcement and pro-cannabis protesters outside
Oaksterdam University in Oakland in April 2012.



It goes without saying that, as a photojournalist, I have many opportunities to meet and greet the fine men and women in blue while pursuing the stories that end up in products of [The Great Big Newspaper Chain]. For the most part, these meetings are unremarkable, at press conferences, the doings of government figures, the famous and near-famous, matters of public safety, or just in the random course of daily life.

The past two days' events have lent themselves to a different kind of interaction though, and I have to say that I'm distressed with the general state of law enforcement. Yesterday gave deafening validity to that old axiom that "when it rains, it pours," as Federal agents staged an early morning raid on three different marijuana-based businesses in Oakland, and even as that action was proceeding to riot police and arrests, elsewhere in our fair city, a troubled man decided that the best resolution to the problems of his personal life was to end the lives of seven other random souls.

First, from our Eliot Ness file, Federal agents from the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Marshals staged a spectacular show of force at Oaksterdam University. Acting on the contents of a sealed warrant, about 50 agents broke into the marijuana cultivation school, and confiscated dozens of boxes of paper files, computer records and (naturally) marijuana plants, even as an angry crowd of about 100 demonstrators gathered on the street outside.

Do I have personal feelings about marijuana, the people who use it, and its legality? I most certainly do. Will I share them here? Not a chance. What I will say is that Oaksterdam has the blessing of Oakland city leaders to instruct its students in the propagation, for personal and medical use, of cannabis, and is affiliated with several medical marijuana dispensaries, which are regulated under California state law. According to the city, Oaksterdam paid more than $1.68 million in taxes last year, at a time when fiscally-challenged Oakland needs every centime it can get its grubby paws on.

The Feds, from all indications, came in unannounced to local authorities, and essentially put Oaksterdam out of business – however briefly – for reasons that agents on the scene refused to disclose. However you feel about marijuana and its effect on the community or the nation, this is a chilling development when the government can break into your home or place of business – without having to tell you why – and wreak havoc. Now, I'm no lawyer, but I seem to remember, vaguely, from high school civics class, that there was some obscure prohibition of "unreasonable search and seizure," somewhere in the U.S. legal code.

If you live here, you know that Oakland, and this country, have decidedly bigger problems than pot growers who are, at least at first glance, playing by the state's rules.