The worst of them were around home and between home and the corner bases, and it was decided to do something about it during the late summer. Rather than reducing the lips with some elbow grease and time, the decision was simply to make the base paths wider by cutting out the offending lip and the grass. So, about 9” of grass was removed from the foul side of the foul line, spiffing it right up.
Al was well and looking good until the 2nd inning of the 2nd game. Our opponent had runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs, and the batter dropped a bunt and took off. The bunt was a pretty bad one as bunts go, since it almost immediately went into foul territory at a fairly sharp angle. But then it happened! The ball hit that nice new edge, and kicked off like it was a pinball machine. Our F5 had been coming in, but once it went foul at such an angle, wasn’t exactly coming in disregarding life and limb, and the P never did get very close to it.
In the end, even though the F5 dove for it to touch it in foul territory, the ball was definitely on the line, the batter-runner was safe at 1st with a hit, and the other runners had moved up.
The reason I told this story isn’t to stop anyone from spiffing up their fields. In fact, quite the contrary. The reason I told the story was to make sure those of you who do that, remember to raise the level of the dirt, up to the level of where the grass rises out of the soil. The base paths aren’t supposed to look like an empty Panama Canal, where the dirt is sometimes more than an inch down.
