619 days

At that point the players emerged from the tunnel, and I moved in closer. Many of the players for both teams seemed quite surprised when they emerged into the stadium. It was probably the biggest crowd some of them had ever played in front of, and even players in the lineups with some MLS experience seemed impressed. Quite simply, this was a Portland soccer crowd. It's a level of electricity that few venues can match.

The announcer read off the lineups over the PA system (apparently), but between the noisy crowd and the speaker alignment, I could hear very little. But the sheer amount of time that it took to do the lineups suggested to me that they must had read the names of the starters, reserves, coaches, general managers, ball boys and ball girls, and the bus driver for the Sounders. As the players prepared to play, I moved my way back towards the corner. Then I noticed that the Timbers players were lining up for their picture, and all of the members of the press (except me) had a few seconds to get the starting lineup photo. I tried to move quickly along the sideline to get in place, but there was no way they were going to wait for me, so I just pointed my camera in the general direction of the players and snapped a picture just as they were finishing their pose. Once again, I can imagine from the stands, it must have looked pretty amusing. If anybody asked, it was the chlorine.

Finally, at about 7:30, the match began. Professional outdoor soccer had returned to Portland. Trying to be as invisible as possible, I made my way along the outer wall, and over onto the east side of the pitch, then moved up along the advertising boards towards the Timbers offensive half.

There were two other photographers set up there. One of them was presumably a professional photographer, judging by the 2 foot long zoom lens he had on the front of his camera and the surprising number of bags he had strewn about him. The other was a woman who had a camera only slightly more sophisticated than my AE-1, though I would doubt seriously that she bought it 10 years ago, used, from a coworker at a coal company in Maryland. "The professional" (as I will refer to him) seemed eager to photograph every single touch of the ball that the Timbers had. Before long, I realized that he must have a digital camera, as I had seem him easily run off 4,000 pictures, without once changing film.

I felt a little humbled to be sitting there with my used AE-1 with it's used zoom lens, partially damaged the previous season when a teenager at a Firebirds game in Corvallis had knocked it out of my hand as they ran past. I took a little heart in knowing that by publishing this report for a-league.com, as well as on my own website, more of my pictures were likely to be seen than his, though if he worked for the local paper, which I suspect he did, his pictures would be seen by many, many times more people than mine. But he's a professional photographer and I'm a unix administrator, and we were in the same place, taking pictures of the same event, and both of us would have our work published. Somehow I felt the level of difficulty had given me a slight victory here.

After taking a few pictures of the action with my zoom lens, and not getting anything particularly exciting, I decided to get a nice crowd shot. The sun was hitting the grandstands nicely, and I pulled out my wide angle lens (the one that came with the camera) and centered the west side of the stadium in the viewfinder, waiting for a few Timbers to come into view to give the shot good content (look at me, trying to talk like a professional photographer. What do I know?) Mark Baena moved into shot, along with Darren Sawatzky as they pushed the ball forward, and just as Mark passed the ball across the field to Darren, I snapped the shot. As I lowered my camera, I saw Darren turn and chip it back to Mark, who was in a full run. I thought for a second he was going to be called offside (for the simple reason that he was indeed, offside) but the referee's assistant kept his flag down, and I stood and watched as Mark Baena skillfully fooled the Seattle goalkeeper and tapped the ball easily into the net.

As the crowd erupted, I saw a lone Seattle player sprinting towards the referee's assistant, which distracted me momentarily from the celebration that was going on behind the goal. Somehow I think that has something to do with the fact that I was doing some hooting and hollering myself. I may be a reporter for a-league.com, assigned to report on all Timbers home games, but I'm also a fan. After a few minutes, I crouched back onto the NexTurf and continued to try to look and small and insignificant as I could behind the advertising boards.

Later in the half, I moved down to the other end of the stadium, hoping to get a few crowd shots of as much of the stadium is I could. After taking a few shots with my wide angle lens that I knew I could turn into a panorama later on, I switched back to my zoom lens and started to walk back towards the Timbers offensive end again just as they were taking a corner kick.

I saw the corner kick dip sharply towards the far post, and saw a Timbers player rise and head it in for a goal. Obviously, there was some connection between me taking crowd shots and Timbers goals. After the first goal had been scored, I'd noticed that someone had rung a bell in the middle of the manually operated scoreboard, which otherwise was unused for the Timbers game. I thought that would make a good shot, so I hurried over to where the person was ringing the bell. Of course I had my zoom lens on by this point, which is harder to focus, and by running closer to the bell I had defeated the purpose of having the zoom lens in the first place. In the end, I ended up with a blurry picture of a bell with an arm sticking out, holding the rope. Ansel Adams I am not.

Of course, I had no idea who had scored the goal, and since the PA announcement was no help, I actually didn't know who scored the goal until I got home.

At halftime, "the professional" started opening up the bags he brought with him, and pulled out an ugly orange and white laptop, obviously an iMac. It appeared that he was going to hook his laptop up to the camera, presumably to upload the pictures that he had taken during the first half. I picture somewhere in a secret military archive are all of the pictures that he took that night, never again to see the light of day. Of course, I strongly suspected that my photo processing lab (also known as Rite Aid one hour processing) was slightly less secure, but undoubtedly, less expensive.

During the second half, I resorted to only using my wide angle lens, as it was too dark for my zoom lens, and even though I tried a few more crowd shots, they failed to produce the goals like they had in the first half. But I still had my pitch-side location, and the increasingly physical play became very intense at times, sitting only a few feet from the field. "The professional" ran off a few thousand more pics, but by late in the match, I had almost run out of film. But I still had one more shot left to catch another special event, as Timber Jim scaled an 80-foot pole which was quite close to where I was sitting. I was glad I had this one more pic to capture this. But then I had expired the two rolls I brought with me, and had no iMac to connect my AE-1 to. But not having to worry about pictures gave me a chance to just sit back on the grass (well, on the NexTurf anyway), and enjoy the rest of the game as Timber Jim attempted to lead the crowd in a cheer using a bullhorn from the top of the pole. Apparently the sound didn't carry well enough from that spot either, as nobody in the stands could hear him. But I could, and I followed along in the cheer with him. Maybe I was making up a little lost time for having been 3000 miles away when he first led the cheers 25 years before.

When the final whistle blew, I had made my way back around to the brewpub. After a rousing cheer went up from the crowd at the end of the game, Darren Sawatzky led all of the Timbers in a circuit of the field, shaking hands and high-fiving the fans, making the final statement that the magic of 1975 could be reborn, if at least for one night. Of course, I had run out of film by this point, but it didn't bother me too much. The moment was special enough as it was, and I get the feeling there will be plenty of victory laps around PGE Park this season.

With the magic of the entire night almost too much to keep me from dancing up the ramp to gate 35, I made my way out onto 18th street. As I was waiting for the MAX train, I saw a father standing on the platform, wearing his 70's Timbers shirt, and his son with a 2001 Timbers shirt. You know, I wish I did have one more picture left in my camera. That one I would have liked to have had.