Leaving it all on the field ...Page 3 of 4 -- And a lot of just plain grunt work. And long hours. Work for the first shift begins at 6 or 7 a.m. and entails watering the infield and cleaning up from the night before. Ever see the mess the players leave behind in the dugout after a game? The crew cleans that up. After the maintenance people in the stands use blowers to clean up the mess from the fans, and the light-weight peanut shells blow out onto the field, the grounds crew has to clean them up too. Damage to the pads along the outfield walls that protect the players? Another grounds crew job. Damaged seats up in the stands? Call the grounds crew. And of course, there’s the tarp.
“The tarp is the hardest part,” says assistant groundskeeper Charles Brunetti, a graduate of the Mississippi State turf management program working his first major league team. “It’s heavy, even when it’s not wet. It’s awkward. The longer it sits on the ground the more the ground pulls on it kind of like suction and it gets harder to roll up.” Brunetti sees the job much like that of a farmer, which he was on his family’s rice and beans farm in Louisiana growing up. “I was working way too much to watch baseball. Here, the long hours are the same. The work ethic is the same. And a lot of what we do is trying to make things grow.” (The pay isn’t much different than a farmhand either. The average crew member makes $8.25 an hour. Of course, they DO get to see a LOT of baseball!) During the day, the crew will fertilize the grass, mow, maybe roll in one of those funky patterns. Occasionally they spread tiny grains of ground-up rubber from old tires on the grass, which settle down into the soil and help protect the grass from wear and tear. Every few days they rake up the foul lines between home and the outfield and repaint them. They use a combination of paint, chalk, and water. The paint holds the chalk in place and keeps it from making a dusty mess during the game. The water makes the whole brew paintable. “It’s harder than a lot of fans would think,” says Joel Strautin, a recent UMass turf management grad. “I was awestruck the first couple weeks. I mean, I’ve been coming here since I was in diapers. It’s fun to put in the effort to make it look like what it was when I was a kid coming here. “But there’s a lot of work. Hauling out the batting cages and setting them up, carrying the hoses, mowing. The hours are long, and there’s a lot with the old field you wouldn’t have to do in a modern park. Still, the guys make it fun. The best part is the friendships.” Continued... |
