{"id":2361644,"date":"2026-04-06T23:16:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2361644"},"modified":"2026-04-06T23:16:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:16:57","slug":"royals-photographer-on-how-he-got-epic-lucas-erceg-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-photographer-on-how-he-got-epic-lucas-erceg-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals photographer on how he got epic Lucas Erceg picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Royals fans were frustrated that closer Lucas Erceg had to pitch Wednesday night in KC\u2019s 13-9 win over the Twins.<\/p>\n

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The Royals had a 12-1 lead after six innings on a rainy night, but the bullpen had a historically bad night<\/a> until Erceg put out the fire.<\/p>\n

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But had Erceg not pitched, we would have been robbed of a candidate for the best photograph of 2026.<\/p>\n

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Royals photographer Jason Hanna caught the incredible moment.<\/p>\n

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Hanna explained how he got the shot but downplayed his impact.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was really pure luck. It had more to do with the circumstances than me doing anything special,\u201d Hanna said. \u201cThe grounds crew was literally throwing dirt everywhere. There was a bunch of dust in the atmosphere. It kind of reflected the light from Crown Vision (the videoboard) when they took down the lights and it was just the blue on Crown Vision. I really didn\u2019t do much. I\u2019ve taken that shot 500 times, and nobody has ever cared about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Thing is, those other 499 pictures didn\u2019t look like that incredible Erceg shot.<\/p>\n

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Royals broadcaster Jake Eisenberg summed it up best during a weekend game: \u201cThat is more than pushing buttons. That is art.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The social-media site Art But Make It Sports thought so and compared it to a piece by Pablo Picasso.<\/p>\n

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You know who else liked it? Erceg.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI work out with (Dodgers pitcher) Alex Vesia in the offseason because I live in Arizona, and he has a huge RV garage that he turned into a weight room,\u201d Erceg told me. \u201cVesia messaged me on Instagram a couple hours after Jason had posted it. He was like, \u2018Dude, this picture so sick.\u2019 I was like, \u2018Yeah, I want to get it framed and I\u2019ll sign it and I want to hang it in your gym area,\u2019 because he has pictures all over.<\/p>\n

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\u201cKind of more so just joking around with him, but kind of serious. And he\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, dude, I love it, we\u2019re gonna get that taken care of, no problem.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Erceg, who became a father in December, hopes one day to have that photo in his home, too.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis offseason, I\u2019ll have it professionally framed and put up maybe somewhere down the line, if I have some sort of man cave,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think my wife would like the esthetic of me on a wall in our living room. But it was a really cool picture. I mean, Jason does a really good job.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This story was originally published April 6, 2026 at 11:57 AM.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Related Stories from Kansas City Star<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pete Grathoff<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Kansas City Star<\/span><\/p>\n

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From covering the World Series to the World Cup, Pete Grathoff has done a little bit of everything since joining The Kansas City Star in 1997. <\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kansascity.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Royals fans were frustrated that closer Lucas Erceg had to pitch Wednesday night in KC\u2019s 13-9 win over the Twins. The Royals had a 12-1 lead after six innings on a rainy night, but the bullpen had a historically bad night until Erceg put out the fire. But had Erceg not pitched, we would have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2059080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2361644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Former-Royals-outfielder-announces-retirement-at-age-of-34.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2361644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2361645,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361644\/revisions\/2361645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2059080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2361644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2361644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2361644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}