I’m part of a group on Facebook called Ballpark Chasers. Many people in this group have the goal of visiting every Major League Baseball stadium. While I would love to do that, it’s not a realistic venture, but I do try to see new-to-me stadiums when I can.
When we visited Denver, part of the plan was to see a game at Coors Field. The first couple days were above 90 degrees, so we decided to wait until our final day to watch the Rockies face the Los Angeles Dodgers.
There were chances of rain that day, but as people in Denver say, just wait a minute and it’ll be done. Well, it did rain, but we bought our tickets since it looked to clear up by game time.
Little did we know about the hail across town.
You would have thought it snowed an inch or two as we crossed Denver to the stadium. People had scoop shovels and were clearing off sidewalks. Coors Field was worse. After all, they put a tarp over the infield, but the outfield was wide open and covered in hail. The game was delayed by two hours to clear it off.
And I was fascinated by the process. I’ve prepped a lot of ball diamonds and cleared off plenty of water over the years, but I’ve never dealt with hail on a field. The field crew used shovels and wheelbarrows, along with heat-blasting leaf blowers. Once an area was cleared of the big stuff, a tractor had a drag that looked like it was squeegeeing the excess water. Like Target Field, Coors Field has a fine drainage system for when it gets wet.
It was cool to watch. Okay, maybe it was just me, but once you’ve worked on sports fields, you appreciate the work and details that go into making a field game-ready. I was envious of the cool line striper they used and the ease with which it dispensed the crucial white foul lines and batter’s boxes. Pro fields also add extra lines for the running lane and coach’s boxes.
I used to have a garden but never found the effort to weed and pay close attention to it. But put me on a baseball or softball field, and I want it to look as good as possible. That includes trying to make the pitching area solid; pitchers tend to dig around the pitching rubber. I even placed some bricks near the rubber in Ellendale so kids couldn’t dig down too far. Some places will use clay more on the pitching mound since it is harder to dig out. It’s also easier to make unplayable if you allow it to get wet.
Batters will dig out spots in the areas around home plate, too. That part of the field needs constant maintenance. Working on the spots near the bases and along the foul lines that see extra traffic is crucial. There are various drags we use to level out the fields, and they all work to make the infield similar to a pool table.
“What’s the point?” someone once asked me before a game. “It doesn’t take long for it to get tracks all over it.”
Sure, I get that, but the field being pristine before a game is important to not only appearance but playability. Yes, there are tracks from cleats right away, but the field, if prepared properly, will still play well and safely, and that’s the trick.
As a much younger coach, I used to watch Jeff Reese meticulously attend to the baseball field that now bears his and Carol’s names. You could always count on that field to play just as you would hope. Coach Reese had his players rake after every practice and game. They understood and appreciated what a gem of a field they got to play on. I also watched Wendy Schultz do that with the softball diamond; you could always count on her driving the drag around after the game.
Even in the offseason, fields should be dragged to maintain consistency. That helps make it easier to get ready when the snow melts and the frost comes out. And when kids aren’t always on them, weeds are more likely to sprout up, so vigilance is key.
QCBA hosted a tournament during Farm and City Days. Teams played 16 games over three days on two fields. We didn’t do a full reset after every single game due to time constraints, but you could see the crew with rakes around the bases, pitching area, and home plate. We’d redraw the lines each time. A few times, we also took the drag inside the lines to level the playing field again. (And now you know where that phrase comes from!) It gets to be a lot during a tournament, but the end results and compliments on how the fields looked was worth it.
We have a lot of people who work on fields, from Paul Kampen with the Ellendale fields during school ball to Dan & Chloe Stork on the New Richland fields to David Lassahn who whipped the Geneva fields into shape. There were nights this summer that we had kids playing on eight diamonds around the area, but they wouldn’t be able to do so without those listed above and others who contribute to an activity for young people to enjoy.
I may never shovel hail off a baseball diamond. It doesn’t seem likely that they’ll ever hand me a rake at Target Field to help. But I’ll keep working with others to keep our local diamonds looking good so our kids can have fun. After all, diamonds aren’t just a girl’s best friend!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is maladdress, which means clumsiness or awkwardness, as in, “After seeing his maladdress with a field rake, the manager suggested he let others fix around the pitching mound.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!