I asked the wheelchair-bound man if I would be bothering him if I took some pictures while kneeling beside him. He said that it wouldn’t be a problem at all. I knelt down and took two quick snaps of Freddie Freeman fouling off pitches, and then an usher was on my ass like it was delivered from the sky like in Sharknado. Telling me I couldn’t take pictures there, I couldn’t stand here, there, and that I needed a ticket. I could have questioned him, but it was pretty clear from the onset that black-man-on-a-power-trip was going on, so it wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. I simply said okay, and left.
Earlier in the evening, and I use the term evening loosely, considering it was 5:15, almost a full two hours prior to the first pitch, sunny and beautiful, and with less than 300 people in the entire stadium. I politely asked the usher in 103 if I could go down to the bottom of the section to snap a couple of pictures of some players taking batting practice.