Recently our entire photo staff worked on a huge Cardinals project in anticipation of Major League Baseball’s All Star Game being played here in St. Louis at Busch Stadium. My part of it involved interviewing and photographing a man who grew up in East St. Louis, but hasn’t lived in the area for at least 25 years. But he is a dedicated Cardinals fan. “There is no other team as far as I’m concerned,” he says with pride.

He now lives in Bismarck, N.D. and he drives down to St. Louis twice a year to volunteer selling raffle tickets during the “Jerseys Off Our Backs” game at Busch Stadium, where fans vie for the chance to win the very jersey that a Cardinals player wore in the game that day. The trip takes more than 14 hours. I contacted him a few days before he was to leave Bismarck to find out where I could meet him for the last leg of his trip. We planned for him to pick me up in Springfield, Illinois so I could make some pictures and get an interview recorded for an audio slideshow to run on stlLtoday.com. The plan was for me to park my car at his mother’s house in Granite City, catch a cab to the Alton Amtrak station, and then take the train to Springfield to meet him. That way I could hook up with him and ride all the way to his destination.

The day before the June 27th game, I set out do do just that. I called the cab company on the way to his mother’s house. They supposedly had a driver on the way there. But after getting there, there was no cab. After a 10-minute wait, I called to check the progress of the cab and they assured me he was close.  The clock kept ticking and another 15 minutes passed. I began to get nervous as my train’s departure time was nearing. Finally, I gave up. I had to take matters into my own hands because at this point, even if the cabbie came, I couldn’t trust the driver to get me to the station on time. I got back into my car after frantically pacing the street outside my subject’s mother’s house and high-tailed it to Alton myself. I figured if I missed the train, it wouldn’t be because some cab driver was late and then drove too slowly.

My adrenaline pumped like I don’t think it has ever pumped before as I thought about the fallout I would face if I missed that train. I nervously thumped the steering wheel at every stop light and slow down from Granite City to Alton. I was also fretting about the fact that I’ve never driven that route before, let alone in a hurry with no room for wrong turns. I made it to the station with about 3 minutes to spare before the train arrived with the conductor very eager to get everyone boarded and keep the train moving.   My heart pounding, I boarded the car, covered with sweat with camera and computer gear hanging from every possible place off my body. Phew!! I made it.

I’m glad I did because once I met my die-hard Cardinal fan, he was road-weary but very easy-going and accommodating. Fittingly, the Cardinals game was playing on his satellite radio. If you don’t do this for a living, you may not know how valuable it is when your subject’s good temperament cools a stressful situation. He had no idea what I had just been through. And I soon forgot about how I almost didn’t make it to Springfield on time that day.