Drag, Water, Repeat: Caring for Major League Dirt (Published 2008) (2024)

YOU’VE got to learn how to wait your turn when you’re a rookie groundskeeper in the major leagues, especially if it’s your first day on the job for the New York Mets. I reminded myself of that as I walked backward along the infield dirt at Shea Stadium pulling a five-foot-wide steel mesh drag, sweat pouring from my every pore.

It was 12:33 p.m. by the left field clock on a Tuesday afternoon in June, the fourth day of a record heat wave, and the temperature was almost 100 degrees. Jet engine racket reverberated from nearby La Guardia Airport. The yawning expanse of Shea’s empty grandstands suffocated the breeze.

The manager of field operations, Bill Deacon, 35, an athletically built former assistant golf course superintendent, wearing a T-shirt, khaki shorts and a Mets baseball cap, stared up at the hazy blue sky.

“Radar’s showing thunderstorms coming up from Washington, D.C.,” Bill said. “We’ll be very lucky if it doesn’t rain before they get the game in.”

My ears perked. If it rained, the grounds crew would have to cover the infield with a huge tarp. Like millions of other fans, I considered rolling out the tarp to be the archetypal act of caring for a baseball field. I thought Bill would welcome an extra hand. I thought wrong.

“You can work with us through the end of batting practice, but I can’t let you out on the field after the game starts,” Bill said. “Awhile back, they let a reporter sweep one of the base paths. A player didn’t recognize him and got upset.”

“Major league superstitious,” I said, chortling.

“The player just wanted to be sure it was done right,” Bill insisted.

As if to confirm that a rookie groundskeeper could wreak unintended havoc, I continued walking backward without glancing over my shoulder to see where I was going. Next thing I knew, the steel mesh drag caught the edges of the third base umpire’s box, spewing infield dirt on the outfield grass. Bill summoned a veteran groundskeeper to vacuum up my mess.

Thankfully, I wasn’t fired on the spot. If I couldn’t help roll out the tarp, I still had an opportunity to transform the ostensibly blue-collar pursuit of groundskeeping into a uniquely nostalgic executive pursuit. This was the last year of Shea Stadium’s 44-year existence. In 2009, it will be turned into a parking lot for the new $850 million Citi Field.

I was treading on hallowed ground in Flushing in Queens. Named after William A. Shea, a lawyer who brought National League baseball back to New York after the Dodgers and Giants left for California, the stadium opened in 1964, and quickly became the site of both sports and entertainment history.

On Aug. 15, 1965, the Beatles played before a capacity crowd of 55,600 people in the first rock concert ever held at a major outdoor stadium. In 1969, the Miracle Mets overcame 100 to 1 preseason odds to win the World Series at Shea. The Mets won the series again in 1986 in between losses in 1973 and 2000.

I could have spent all day soaking up the Shea Stadium atmosphere, but for better or worse, Bill Deacon allowed me to get back to work.

By now, one of the 12 men on the day shift was already riding a lawn mower across the dark and light stripes of Kentucky bluegrass in the outfield. Bill told me the grass is kept at seven-eighths of an inch, down from 1 1/4 inches a few years ago, because the Mets want to emphasize speed.

He said the color of the stripes depends on the mower path: a dark stripe indicates that the grass has been mown toward you; a light stripe indicates that it has been mown away from you.

But even though most of the field is grass, the most important part from a groundskeeper’s point of view is the infield dirt. “The dirt is what you take pride in because that’s where most of the players play the game,” Bill noted. “Home plate and the pitcher’s mound are heavy clay. The infield dirt is 60 percent sand, 25 percent clay and 15 percent silt. We keep the sand and silt content relatively high so the players won’t pull out chunks of clay with their spikes, which makes the ball get bad hops.”

I spent the next two hours helping Bill and the crew manicure the dirt with a granular top dressing called Turface that resembled Kitty Litter. After spreading a layer, we sprayed the Turface with water to give it a corklike resilience that would reduce bad ball hops. Spraying required at least six of us to form a kind of conga line to hold the industrial-size green hose so that it would not rub furrows in the dirt or the infield grass.

Hose-carrying underscored my rookie status. Except for one new hire, the junior member of the crew was in his 14th season with the Mets. The oldest member, Enzo Limongelli, 79, a former Brooklyn Dodgers fan, boasted 45 seasons and a large following of female admirers. Pete Flynn, 70, was in his 47th season.

They are paid roughly $21 an hour, and are required to help maintain the entire stadium, not just the playing field. But when I asked Pete to account for his longevity, he matter of factly replied, “I like what I do.”

At 3:05 p.m., we stopped watering and set up the field for batting practice. Our assigned tasks proceeded in a time-honored ritual that included rolling the batting cage from behind the center field fence to a spot behind home plate; positioning protective screens in front of the pitcher’s mound, in shallow center, and at all three bases; and covering the precious infield dirt around home plate with medium-size tarps supported by layers of polymer mesh called Enkamat. The formerly pristine baseball field now looked like a jungle gym for overgrown kids.

By 3:57 p.m., as Mets players began wandering out of their locker room to take warm-up swings, the crew and I took a late lunch break. At 6:25 p.m., as players from the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks finished their turns at batting practice, we returned with an additional 10 co-workers and removed the cages, screens and turf covers.

Then we formed another hose-carrying conga line and watered the infield dirt again, transforming the field back into a game-ready ballpark. I saw the crowd trickling into the grandstands, and heard vendors shouting, “Hot dogs!”

At 7:05 p.m., a man wearing a pink tie and a gray mourning coat stepped up to a microphone at home plate to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” We dropped the watering hose, and stood at attention facing the American flag behind the center field fence with our baseball caps over our hearts.

At 7:10 p.m., a corporate sponsor’s executive threw the ceremonial first pitch. Rather than remaining out on the field, Bill Deacon rushed off to his office to monitor the weather radar. As is their standard procedure, my co-workers led me back to an air-conditioned locker room underneath the grandstands, where we watched the game on wall-mounted closed-circuit television sets. The Mets jumped to a 3-1 lead in the first inning. I said my goodbyes, and hopped a No. 7 subway back to Manhattan.

The predicted thundershowers arrived at Shea Stadium about half past 9, just as I was finishing dinner at an Upper East Side bar with a TV tuned to the Mets game. I watched with envy as the groundskeeping crew rolled out the huge tarp to cover the infield. After a 61-minute rain delay, they removed the tarp and the game resumed.

The Mets wound up losing to the Diamondbacks, 9-5. I ordered a beer and toasted my former co-workers, knowing that they would be on the job until well past midnight.