Two Nights at the Ballpark (Nearly) Twenty Years Apart
I picked up a new lens recently and figured I’d test it out at the ballpark on a Tuesday evening as the Reds took on the Twins against a backdrop of $3 beers, $2 hot dogs, and $1 ice creams.
Great American Ballpark on June 17, 2025 as the Cincinnati Reds hosted the Minnesota Twins:
Coincidentally, I’ve also been working on a project that has me digging up and organizing everything I’ve ever shot. In doing so, I came across a series of similar photographs from 2006 when I was testing out a then-new camera at the same ballpark nearly two decades prior. These photographs were made with a Fujifilm Finepix S5100. I was seventeen and had just recently started shooting with no sense of post-processing or editing. These images are exactly how they were made by the camera—complete with intentional black-and-white filters, handheld lenses, and the customary mid-2000’s high school composition style.
Great American Ballpark on May 1, 2006 as the Cincinnati Reds hosted the St. Louis Cardinals:
The original scoreboard featuring a lineup of the late Ryan Freel, Felipe López, Rich Aurilia, big dumb Adam Dunn, Austin Kearns, “Double ‘E’ (for ‘errors’)” Edwin Encarnacion, Brandon Phillips, David Ross (not Weathers), and Bronson Arroyo.
Great American Ballpark is a perfectly serviceable mid-tier stadium within the grand scheme of MLB cathedrals. If anything, it’s a perfect reflection of Cincinnati.
Still, I love it, and appreciate the little bits of character that have managed to appear over its lifetime so far.
Fuck the Castellini’s, though. And Bryan Price. Should’ve kept Dusty (don’t bother with your 700 WLW mouthbreather comments).
Go Reds.
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If you dig baseball stories, you might appreciate these posts from over the years:
Since 2007, the content of this website (and its former life as Queen City Discovery) has been a huge labor of love.
If you’ve enjoyed stories like The Ghost Ship, abandoned amusement parks, the Cincinnati Subway, Fading Ads, or others over the years—might you consider showing some support for future projects?
