quote:Originally posted by nickp:
SKeep--all points well taken. When I say a machine--I have access to the boro bull dozer. Lips were so bad I decided to cut them off about 18" and now in the process of re-planting grass. I've read all the pointers on power washing so I plan on doing that once I get the field back in decent shape.
Well, if the lips were as bad as you’re making out, chances are you’ve taken the path of least resistance. I hope it wasn’t so bad that you can’t plant sod.
I don’t know what grass you’re gonna use, but I’ll offer this bit of info. The lower you can keep the grass cut, the easier it will be to wash off the soil. I much prefer reel mowers because they not only can get down to some really short heights, they also have a roller that helps keep bumps down at least a little. Trouble is, some grasses don’t like to be cut short. I’ve gotten used to Bermuda here at our local field. They used to cut it to 3/8th”, and at that height you can easily use a broom on it. But I don’t think Bermuda will work very well where you’re at.
quote:Back to the grass line question... If you look at the MLB diagram closely you can see that the 1st and 3rd basepaths are 6 feet wide. The 45' restraining box is 3' wide--and by eyeballing the schematic--it looks like the dirt base path straddles the foul line 3 feet on both sides.
However, take a look at any major league game on TV tonight. I think you'll see that the outside part of the restraining box is actually in the dirt...which reinforces to me that the actual dirt basepaths are not centered 3 foot around the baselines. They look to be 2 feet dirt in fair territory and 4 feet dirt in foul territory. By eyeballing the grass line on TV between 1st and 2nd--it also looks more like 2 feet to me.
I know this is a pretty boring issue--but I am at a point where I can put this field back together the way it should be--and I find this grassline issue interesting. I guess I would just love to know the real reason why these grasslines in the pro's seem to be a little different than the specs....
As you should be able to tell by now, it isn’t boring to me! LOL.
If you look closely at all the ML parks, I’ll bet you’ll see that they’re all pretty much at least slightly different. But, If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about how it was as far as aesthetics go. What I’d do is set the base path width between home and 1st and 3rd, to whatever size drag I was gonna use on them, plus at least 6” to have a little leeway.
To me, there’s nothing worse than those base paths that aren’t dragged! There are people who know how to use a landscape rake well enough to put a really smooth finish on soil, but I pretty much guarantee you ain’t gonna find a lot of them volunteering to take care of a baseball field. So, the easy answer is, make them wide enough for the drag!
But remember, even that drawing in the ML Rules is not carved in stone. I remember when they were building what was then Pac Bell Park in SF. My friend’s son worked on the drawings, and I got to see everything from the original blueprints through the as builts, and they were making changes all the time. They even had to get special permission from MLB for the distance to the fence down the line.
In fact, the original plans had a soil path from home plate to the mound like in Detroit, and when the original infield was put in, that’s the way it was. But for some reason they decided to change it, and they yanked the entire IF grass and redid it just because of that.
Here’s a strange hint for ya if ya really want to make the IF top notch. Several years back, we had a carnival set up on our Kommie Kickball field and it overflowed into our 60/90 field. The fields got really torn up pretty bad by all the trucks, and our maint super took a big risk. He decided that it was so bad, he’d have to take drastic steps to fix it, and if that didn’t work, the entire 5 acres would have to be regarded and replanted.
So, he rented an asphalt roller like they use repairing streets. It wasn’t a giant one, but it was fairly good size, and guess who volunteered to drive it? YEAH! Of course it wasn’t very glamorous driving back and forth covering only 6’ at a time over 5 acres, but the whole thing wasn’t torn up. Surprisingly, it did a pretty nice job and only a few spots actually had to be replanted.
But the funny thing was, as I was doing the outfield, I got a brilliant idea. I took that thing over to the IF on the big field and did a back and forth, just to see what would happen. Well, I didn’t hurt a thing, and it seemed to look better, so I did the whole IF from e to w, n to s, ne to sw, and nw to se. I swear, it came out like a pool table! When the folks saw what I’d done on the big field, they squawked until I did it on the small field too, and it came out like a table top too!