Simply put, just like the famous third baseman of the Baltimore Orioles, I am obsessed with the game of baseball. The first Major League Baseball game that I attended in person was at Anaheim Stadium in 1985. My grandfather took me to see the California Angels (their name at the time) host the Texas Rangers. I still have the program from that game, which featured Brian Downing and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover. And on the inside you will still find the scorecard that depicts my attempt to keep track of the action on the field.
As a lifelong Dodger fan, it’s strange to admit that my first MLB game wasn’t at Dodger Stadium. But my grandparents lived in Orange County, and it was – and still is – much easier to get in and out of that stadium compared to the one in Los Angeles.
My grandmother was a customer service representative at Bank of America in Placentia, and she noticed that one of her clients listed his employer as the Los Angeles Dodgers. She asked for his autograph, and he wrote “To Darrell, Go Dodgers!” and signed it “Orel Hershiser.” That was in 1987, the year before he had one of baseball’s most incredible pitching seasons of all time.
After receiving that note from Hershiser, I became an avid collector of baseball cards and other memorabilia. As I grew older, and as the baseball card industry became more about the money and less about the fun, I turned my obsession toward building a collection of books and videos. I love to read about the great game of baseball, and watch old footage from what took place years before me.
Here’s a sneak peek into my life… the bookshelves in my bedroom tell the story:
For our assignment this week, we were tasked with posting various images on our blog. The photo above was taken by me with my phone camera. The photo below of Adam Dunn swinging and missing a pitch, with a catcher and umpire standing behind home plate was found online on Wikimedia, and is used by permission of the source under Creative Commons licensing:
Finally, we were introduced to artificial intelligence software called Dall-E, which will create an image based on the text that you provide. I literally told the AI software, “an overhead view of a baseball batter wearing a grey uniform, swinging while a catcher and an umpire are behind home plate.” This is what the software came up with in about 10-15 seconds:
Interesting, right? The software was fairly close on its first attempt. Perhaps I could try to fine tune my words even more to achieve the same angle. But then again… I don’t like to obsess over things.
