Car trouble had me running late to the Class 3A and 4A state finals in baseball at Safeco Field.

The games are seven innings long, and I'd only missed the first inning of the 3A final between Kennewick and Kelso, so imagine my surprise when I walked into the stadium and saw that that score was 8-0 in favor of Kennewick after 1 1/2 innings.

Crap (or something like that). The game was over, for all intents and purposes, right?

Who comes back from an 8-0 deficit?

Apparently Kelso, that's who. Because they scored six in the bottom half of the sixth to trail by only two runs headed into the third.

"Game on!", as Wayne would say to Garth.

Or, in the case of Kennewick's bats, never mind. They weren't able to match the four runs they'd pushed across in the first two innings, no, they scored FIVE in the third, and FIVE MORE in the fourth.

The rout was clearly on.

Mariner's announcer Dave Niehaus always refers to "the scoreboard totals", and boy did they tell a story. Slapping a 1.4x extender onto the 400mm lens allowed my to compress the scoreboard against Kelso shortstop Spencer Downs in the later innings, when they trailed, 24-7:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens + EF 1.4 extender = 560mm, ISO 800, 1/400 sec., f4.0)

Yes, it was baseball, not football.

Because neither team is from our circulation area, I knew we wouldn't use a lot of photos from the game, but that doesn't come into play when it comes to shooting pictures. You have an opportunity to shoot? Use it. Practice. Hope for great moments. Find the cool light.

I made a decent double-play photo when Kennewick second baseman Austin Pentecost got air as he tried to turn a double-play when Kelso's Kelly Rice (left) was forced out on the play.

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 400, 1/1000 sec., f8.0)

Near the end of the game, the reality of the situation set in to the Kelso players, as they lost, 24-12. And really, if you'd have told them before the game they were going to score 12 runs in the final, none of them would have imagined they'd be on the losing end of things:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens + EF 1.4 extender = 560mm, ISO 800, 1/400 sec., f4.0)

Championship baseball games always end in a pileup of players at the mound, and this one was no different.

I'd brought a 400mm, a 70-200mm, and a 16-35mm lenses to the game, and decided to put the 1.4 extender on the 70-200 for the endgame pileup. I was afraid the 400mm would be too tight, and the 70-200mm a bit too loose:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens + EF 1.4 extender @ 240mm, ISO 800, 1/640th sec.,f4.0)

Zooming into the pileup, I was able to capture Kennewick's Garrett Woods showing everyone who is number one in 3A baseball:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens + EF 1.4 extender @ 240mm, ISO 800, 1/640th sec.,f4.0)