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I coach at a private high school with facilities that are not the best. My field has the fence taken down every summer because another sport uses the outfield and some of the infield for there field. I am thinking of letting the school grow grass in the base paths. Only dirt would be pitches mound, home plate, home to 1st and 3rd to home. The dirt would stop a couple feet from 1st and third. So 1st, 2nd and 3rd would be surrounded by grass. Anyone have any experience with a field similar to this? The maintenance crew is going to fight me about this but the Athletic Director is fine with it.
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I had a team play on a field like this several years ago but it was all grass except for cutouts around each base and the mound. It basically looked like a turf field from the 80's. Overall it didn't look bad but when you got on it there were several places that weren't very good. It had a rolling hills look to it from first to second. You couldn't see it from the stands but on the field you could tell it was a bad hop waiting to happen.

That's what makes all grass tough is that if something goes wrong you can't really fix it without killing the grass. You can't mess up dirt which is what makes it awesome. Why are you leaving the dirt path to first and third? Why not go ahead and grass that in as well?
A well groomed infield is imperative for consistent play. I'd seriously rethink seeding the base paths. Several of our local middle schools have football practice fields which overlap onto the fringes of the adjoining baseball infields. Mid summer, well after baseball season is over, laying sod along the base paths is an option. Taking it out with a sod cutter before baseball season begins will get old, but you may be surprised the physical & monetary help you can get, esp if you allow a well structured travel team occasional access to the ballfield in the Spring & early Summer.
Last edited by journey2
I have a question: are the fields around you in your conference and such playing on an all grass infield? We have our JV field with this all grass except around the bases it is easier and less expensive to maintain, but ours is the only field such as this and our players have a hard time adjusting to other fields that have dirt and bad hops, so that might be something to consider.
I wanted to have some dirt on the field but I may have them grass everything. We would also be rolling the field every so often. No other fields are like this in the area. Most are all dirt infields. People leave them like that in Pittsburgh because of the **** weather we get. I have to fight maintnence about this on Monday. They want to leave the dirt but every summer they let the weeds grow in because our laccrose and s****r teams use our outfield and some of the infield. It never looks good because we play on it before maintenence can really get the field ready. So it never really recovers.

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