Father's pastime, son's cards: Bill Stephan's photographs appear on Yankees prospect Trevor Stephan's baseball cards

Making it to The Show takes a little bit of luck, a lot of talent, a lot of work and often help from others such as coaches and family members.

Photographer Bill Stephan with his son's dog, Wilson.

While New York Yankees prospect Trevor Stephan hasn't gotten there just yet, he does have a taste of big-league cardboard and he had some family help there, too. How? His dad, Bill, was the photographer for several of his baseball cards made so far showing him as a member of the Yankees organization.

"I knew there was a possibility that Topps would use one of my photographs as they contacted me through my son’s agent before spring training [last year]," said the 55-year-old manufacturing executive and father of two. "For a baseball dad, it’s a pretty cool thing to have one of your photographs used as a baseball card image. I wasn’t concerned about being paid."

The 23-year-old pitcher appears on more than 150 different cards in all from three 2017 prospect releases and five products from last year -- and his dad's photos can be found on cards in at least three of them, 2018 Bowman Chrome, 2018 Bowman Draft and 2018 Bowman Platinum along with all of their various parallel versions.

Those baseball cards show the 6-foot-5 225 right-hander and former University of Arkansas standout as a member of the Staten Island Yankees but were edited to reflect the uniform of the 27-time World Series champions. In two seasons of minor-league ball, the former third-round pick is 7-10 with a 3.18 ERA and 184 strikeouts in 158-plus innings. Early last season, Baseball America noted his quick path to Double-A ball and noted he "could be closer than expected to The Bronx."

"I’d always enjoyed photography, but having kids seemed to enhance the experience," Bill Stephan said, noting his oldest son was a member of his prep swim team. "Add digital photography with digital editing ... and the whole process became my creative outlet. I became the swim and baseball team photographer and wore out a couple cameras in the process. Being the team’s photographer also kept me busy and my mouth shut during meets/games -- a good thing for youth sports dad. I have roughly 50,000 images (7,000 on Flickr), and less than 10 percent are of my kids."

He also talked about what he likes in a photo.

"I specialize in photographing pitchers, but that seems obvious since my son is a pitcher. Actually, I’ve taken very few photos of Trevor I really like," he said. "As a parent, it gets pretty stressful watching your kid compete, especially if things go south. In my opinion, photography and creativity don’t thrive in stressful environment. The pitching photos I like best are taken from directly behind the plate though the backstop and include the catcher, hitter and/or the umpire in the foreground with the ball in hand just before release."

Getting published hasn't really been his goal with photography, but he said the family cardboard was a nice bonus.

"In print, everything pales in comparison with having two images used for baseball cards, but my images have appeared in the local newspaper a few times," he said. "Online, my images have been used by MLB Pipeline, several colleges and musicians for websites or social media promotions. When taking photos of sports or concerts, I always grant use rights to the athletes, musicians, parents and schools."

So, what was the son's reaction to dad's photos on his cards?

"Trevor’s reaction to my photo being used as a baseball card was a relaxed 'That’s pretty cool' in chill-vibe sort of way," he said. "It’s funny how these things travel full circle with kids. Pre-teen, Trevor was happy to have his dad being involved with his baseball life – taking photos was just fine. As he entered into high school, I think he would have preferred I was lower profile and I’m certain he didn’t appreciate his coach asking me to take team photographs. His first year of college baseball at Hill College, he actually asked for photo sequences to study his mechanics."

Now, those photos are appearing on baseball cards that he's getting paid to sign.

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