March 29, 2006

TABLE FOR ONE

A little glimpse inside the glamorous world of culinary journalism:

I decided to do a story pegged to Major League Baseball's opening day about the many ways food and baseball intersect. I mean, they have a "home plate," for crying out loud. They hit "taters." They call the ball an "egg." There had to be something I could do with that.

So I talked to a baseball linguist who had written a book. And I heard that the new skipper for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Joe Maddon, was a big food and wine guy, so I arranged for an interview.

I went and hung out in the clubhouse after one of the early spring training workouts and waited a couple hours until all the beat writers and TV people had done their interviews. Maddon sat down and gave me a great interview.

Then a week or so later, I got an idea to have him pose with a table setting, only with home plate instead of a dinner plate. The D-Rays P.R. guy, Rick Vaughn was gracious enough to set it up and we were ready a couple days after that.

So I show up at the training complex in St. Pete one day. Of course it's overcast. To the point of almost raining. I've lugged a table, chair, place setting, tablecloth, wine and wine glasses, you name it. And now it looked like garbage outside.

Photographer Mark Guss and I waited again until all the beat writers were done. And the TV crews. And waited. And waited.

Ever the optimist, Mark decided that the impending rain was a good thing. "If we can get this shot before the storm, it'll make for nice light,'' he said.

Meanwhile we set up the table and chair and place setting just to be ready.

Only problem was, the groundskeepers needed to do their job.

JoeMaddonTable1.jpg

So we moved the table and chair and place setting...

Then the lawn guys had us move the table again.

JoeMaddonTable2.jpg

Then the clouds parted and bright sun shone through.

Still the optimist, Mark said, "No, this is good. It'll make nice color this way."

Maddon eventually rode up on a golf cart, got off, shook hands, sat down and asked what we wanted him to do. He noticed the bottle.

"Hey, a rose'," he said, pegging it right away.

We asked him to open the bottle and pour a glass. Then he noticed the label on the bottle: Ménage à Trois.

"Oh, I'm gonna get so much shit for this in the clubhouse from the guys,'' he said.

Five minutes later, we were done.

Here is one of the photos Mark made:

JoeMaddonTable.jpg


You can read the story by clicking here.

Posted by Jeff at March 29, 2006 07:58 AM
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