I shot this from behind the backstop about 2 inches from the ground....

Great timing and I love the eyes and concentration on the pitcher's face. Did you shoot this with a compact camera or a digital SLR? The reason I ask is that I think there's too much depth-of-field and the background is distracting. Less depth-of-field would allow us to really focus on the pitcher and strengthen the image a lot. Looks like it's been oversharpened a bit, too. But it's a really good picture, regardless.

It was shot with a Canon S3 compact digital. I didn't do any image manipulation other than cropping and reducing the size to fit the 800x800 size restriction.

I wish I had more control over the DOF - I believe I shot this "wide open".

Yeah, I'm finding the same with the G9, the short focal length is great for landscapes, but less useful in other circumstances because of the wide DoF.