The past few days I've had the chance to do some stories on local baseball heros. On Saturday WKYT's David Patrick and I went to Dayton, Ohio for a minor league baseball game. Saturday was a pretty hot day and because of a mix up D.P. and I actually ended up driving the stations P.T. Cruiser WITHOUT airconditioning! It was a long, hot drive from Lexington to Dayton.
The reason we went to Dayton was because the Beloit Snappers were playing the Dayton Dragons. Both of these teams are single A minor league teams...Beloit is part of the Minnesota Twins' farm system while Dayton is part of the Cincinnati Reds' farm system.
A quick note...the Dayton Dragons (field on left) have been around for 9 seasons and have sold out EVERY game! Incredible for a single A team. In fact, Sports Illustrated rated a ticket to see and Dayton Dragon's game as the 10th hottest ticket in ALL of sports!The Beloit Snappers feature a Lexington native named Ben Revere (below). Revere was drafted right out of Lexington Catholic high school in the 1st round of last years draft by the Twins. He's a speedy outfielder and a great guy.
David was not feeling well during the day and it was quite a crunch for us to get the story done but we pulled it off. I'll explain...the game started in Dayton at 7 pm. David and I got there around 4 and interviewed Revere, a teammate, and his manager. We then shot some video of Revere warming up and taking batting practice. Then we decided to stay for the first inning of the game. We had to get back however because David's story was scheduled to air for the 11 pm show that night. We had a 2 hour drive back to Lexington and then we had to edit the story together. So...as I said it was quite a crunch but David worked hard and got the story done about 7 minutes before it aired! Such is the life a TV reporter! 
I'll share one of the cool parts of the story (which will kinda ruin the surprise of watching the piece I did but that's ok) Anyway...I had the idea while David and I were waiting on Ben to come out and start warming up that perhaps we could put a wireless mic on Ben for warmups. So when Ben came out I asked him if he would be willing to wear a mic during warm ups and he was excited to do so. It was cool to pick up sound of him signing autographs and greeting the many friends and family that came to the game to watch him. However, the coolest part of him wearing a mic actually happpened a little later.
As the game was set to begin we told Ben we'd go ahead and take the mic off him and he said he would just wear it for the first innning. It turned out to be some awesome natural sound. He got him hitting a ball in the gap between 1st and 2nd for a single (He's currently the only player in ALL of pro baseball hitting over .400) and then we had the sound of him stealing second base. And when I say we had the sound I mean you could hear him grunting and puffing as he ran and you could hear the collision as he slid into second base! Needless to say...WKYT sports director, Steve Moss, loved the sound we got and I was pretty proud that it was my idea!
I'll have another baseball story later.
