Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 08, 2005
Green, Green Grass of Home

David Singer send a link to this NY Times article about the death of artifical grass in the National League:

Players with troublesome legs, like left fielder Cliff Floyd of the Mets, usually learn to check for upcoming games on artificial turf, since such games can mean one of two things: nine innings of discomfort, or a day off.

To his delight, when Floyd scanned the Mets' schedule this year, he saw something that couldn't have made him happier: For the first time in four decades, the National League is free of plastic grass. As a result, 10 National League teams, including the Mets, will play all 162 regular-season games on the real stuff. A baseball fact of life that began when the Astrodome in Houston introduced artificial turf to the major leagues in 1966 is now officially over for one-third of major league baseball.

It's excellent news. At one time, half of the ballparks in the National League used artifical surfaces (Montreal, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Houston). I believe my late father-in-law had something to do with this. Neither my wife nor I remember the story perfectly, but he was working for Monsanto in the 1960s and happened to meet with someone involved in the building or maintenance of the dome. This person was telling him how difficult it was to grow grass there. Monsanto had introduced this green carpet for blacktop school yards, and I believe my father-in-law mentioned it to his associate, and the rest is history. I've written my brother-in-law to see if he remembers the story better, and I'll update when I hear from him.

Here's a history of the invention from About.com.

Update: My brother-in-law writes:

I know my father was directly involved with both the development and marketing of Astroturf, but beyond that I don't know much else, sad to say.

As you know, "Astroturf" entered the language as a generic term for all artificial playing surfaces. It used to rile Dad tremendously when cheaper, inferior quality imitiations of Astroturf were installed in other stadiums and were commonly called "astroturf". He hated to see the product get a black eye in public relations when football and baseball players would injure themselves, or the ball would bounce funny, and blame the "astroturf" surface. "It's that lousy Polyturf causing that trouble, damn it, not Astroturf!" Not sure who made Polyturf -- possibly arch-rival DuPont (the name was almost swear-word in our house during Dad's Monsanto days....)

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Posted by David Pinto at 11:11 PM | Stadiums | TrackBack (0)
Comments

How GREAT is that!!! How far we've come! That is wonderful. It makes me wish I was in an NL town...(scary)

Posted by: Tom Strouse at March 9, 2005 12:36 AM

Yeah, this really is great news! Maybe the AL will reciprocate and ditch the DH.

Posted by: sabernar at March 9, 2005 09:46 AM
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