Moisture management is huge in infield prep
8 Jul, 2011 By: Ron Hall Athletic Turf NewsBillowing clouds of reddish-tan dust lazily waft over the crispy, drought-stressed outfield grass toward the prim ranch-style homes facing the athletic field complex.
The source of the dust — two young men in a John Deere Gator pulling a chain link drag mat in looping circles around a dirt infield. They’re smoothing the girl’s softball field for play. Judging by their vigorous attack on the infield, the hurrying student summer workers likely have more fields to get ready yet that day.
Dry just like the budget
Their efforts signify the most basic level of baseball field maintenance. Cut the grass. Fill and level the holes on the infields. Drag them smooth prior to the games, even to the point of pulverizing the dry clay into fine dust. They have little access or time to use water in preparing the infields.
That’s what you get when you’re working with a tiny budget. But surprisingly, in this instance, and even at this bare-bones level, this city’s (my city’s) five baseball and softballs fields, play surprising well. Complaints from coaches and players are rare.
Admittedly, this is community play, and the fields don’t have to be professional level, just safe and level.
As play becomes more competitive and the stakes greater, more is expected of baseball and softball fields. Moisture becomes a bigger issue in their ongoing maintenance. Indeed, moisture management is often the biggest difference between great baseball infields and not-so-great baseball infields. Using water — the right amounts at the right times — to get the right consistency of feel and playability in that finicky mixture of sand, clay and silt is the magic that makes fields play consistently great.
The greater the percentage of clay relative to the other two ingredients, and especially sand, the more critical moisture management becomes. The amount of clay in the mixture is usually the biggest difference between intensively maintained, high profile baseball fields and the fields used for school or community leagues.
Creative water use
Veteran baseball dirt pro Jesse Pritchard, CSFM, says that being able to manipulate moisture to provide consistently good infields is as much an art as science. Art? You bet. (right, Jesse Pritchard, CSFM, blue shirt)
Pritchard, who prepares and maintains the baseball fields at the University of Virginia, says that the maintenance regimen that works on one field may (and probably won’t) work on another. There is no single recipe for maintaining great infields. Every baseball and softball is different, and weather and playing conditions change from day to day even on a single field.
“We all deal with challenges and moisture is the biggest one that I deal with,” Pritchard told an audience of about 150 fellow field pros at the recent STMA Regional Conference at the University of Tennessee recently.
Professionals that take care of high-profile fields generally like to put the moisture on their infields the night before the next day’s game or games. They want to get the moisture several inches into the infield dirt, without flooding it of course, and let the next day’s sun and wind dry it out enough so that it only requires a light cosmetic watering just prior to play.
Each field manager has his or her on method of testing the degree of wetness. Some like to pick up a piece of infield dirt and see if they can roll it into a ribbon without it breaking apart. That’s what they want.
Pritchard often uses a car key or the blade of a pocketknife. If he can easily bury the key or blade of the knife up to the top and pull it out cleanly, he knows the infield has about the right amount of moisture for play.
“I want clean cleats in and clean cleats out,” Pritchard told his fellow pros.
Whether the field plays a bit harder or a bit softer from day to day, is not as much a concern to him, as his ability — through his work on the field’s edges and his use of moisture — to provide a surface that plays consistently without bad hops.
 | Article
Driving Daytona 1 Sep, 2000 |
| Article
The hole story on aerating 1 Jul, 2001 | |
 | Article
LM Week in Review: Athletic Turf 24 Jun, 2002 |
| Article
Upheavals mark seed trade 1 Aug, 2002 | |
| Article
Prep your fields for spring 1 Jan, 2003 | |
| Article
LM WiR: Turf Management 28 Mar, 2003 | |
Please send any technical comments or questions to our webmaster.