MLB Baseball Opening Day Artist John Robertson Baseball Painting

Opening Day Major League Baseball (MLB)

Is March 29 a national holiday?  Should be, as it is MLB’s opening day of the baseball season.  There should be floats, and the Blue Angels dipping into the stadium – a huge balloon release or five hundred red, white and blue pigeons flying around the stadium.  Fireworks blasting overhead.   For   Every player is nervous with either butterflies in their stomach or a monkey on their back.  It all depends on how their last season ended.  But it is a special day, a birthday for everyone.  Something, somewhere in some stadium something great will happen. 

this is to be the first day we get to see the potential fairy tail team that will go on to win the World Series - or it will be our first sight of a future Hall of Famer.

It is a new dawn with a game opening in a forty degree icebox of a stadium or another stadium opening in a climate conducive to an eighty-two degree warming oven.  Will you be there to see it?  Will you see the first pitch, the first throwing of the hotdog or bag of peanuts?  Are we going to see an opening day shutout?  A no-hitter?  Only happened once. A walk-off home run?  Why not?  It is the ceremonial beginning of spring.

Me?  What will I do?  I will probably create a new baseball painting – something that will remind me of that opening day in late March.  That is what painting is for me – a way of recalling a day or experiencing it again through the act of painting.  It is a part of life that    I can’t let go but need to remind myself of the joys of spring.  Opening day does that for me.  The new year is not in January it is the opening day of spring bringing all the hopes of a great year. 

The baseball sports art painting by sports artist John Robertson is Sports Art baseball painting image of a baseball painting approximately 60“ by 72”, acrylic on unstretched canvas.

Baseball Art LA Dodgers Catcher Painting

LA Dodgers Catcher 

Painting of LA Dodgers catcher.  The LA Dodgers have two good catchers with each doing a yeoman job with the pitching teammates.  This painting could be of either  Yasmani Grandal  or Austin Barnes as I used a generic catcher for reference to the painting.  As a Los Angeles Dodgers both are having a good season.  Yasmani Grandal:  led all every-day catchers in the majors with 27 homers last season and at the time of this posting his batting average is batting 316.  Austin Barnes: batting 265 right now is a player the  Dodgers were willing to part with veteran Carlos Ruiz, in part, because of their confidence in Barnes.  

About Catchers

 These two catchers have had some good highlights and being on a winning team that have a good shot at the World Series this year..  I am not sure if these catchers do what so many others do, learning in the minor leagues to watch every game on replay.  A catcher wants to do is look at the sequences, go through the at-bats, and consider what other things they could have done - maybe differently.  It was a way of re-thinking the games and that may give them insights for future games.  And this makes any pitcher respect his catcher, knowing that his catcher has done all the homework possible to make the right pitching calls. 

Baseball Art 

The catcher baseball painting by Sports Artist John Robertson is 48 inches by 48 inches, ink and acrylic on old baseball newsprint attached to canvas.  

Baseball art Painting of Catcher Ramon Hernandez

Ramon Hernandez Portraint painting 

by sports artist John Robertson

50" x 70" acrylic on unstretched canvas

A Catcher is a Backstop With a Good Arm

Catcher Ramon Hernandez MLB Teams

I painted Ramon Hernandez, an excellent catcher (and could play first base) because he was such a great workhorse for any team he played for – and he did play for a number of them.  Ramon with the Oakland Athletics (1999–2003), San Diego Padres (2004–2005), Baltimore Orioles (2006–2008), Cincinnati Reds (2009–2011), Colorado Rockies (2012) and Los Angeles Dodgers (2013.  He moved around a lot but was always a great contributor to whichever team he played for.  He has an interesting position to play.

 About Catchers 

Here’s a funny story about Joe Torre who, among a number of great achievements was a great catcher.  He was once asked why he became a catcher.  “When I was 16 years old, my brother Frank said, 'You'd better become a catcher, because you're too big and fat to do anything else.' Well, I took his advice. It was a quick way to get to the big leagues, and I've never regretted it.”  Now Hernandez never made the choice because he was six feet tall and weighed in at around one ninety.  That’s not big and fat.  Also he was a good hitter with a two-sixty-three hitting average over his long career. 

Ramon Hernandez, like most catchers was the defensive leader on the field. He called the pitches and positioned players on the field and had a pragmatic view of baseball. The great pitcher Bob Feller said, "If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands."

Ramon had psychological insights and had a list of behaviors for each player approaching the batting box. His eyes were continuing to move across the field of play and his mind running the different offensive scenarios in his head. All of this going on with a baseball bat menacingly inches from his head.  That is what good catchers did.