This is a big year for the Waterbury Municipal Stadium. As the host of the upcoming 2016 Mickey Mantle World Series, the stadium is well into preparations for the big event. Unfortunately, all progress came to a crashing halt when a TruGreen crew mistakenly applied a crabgrass inhibitor and killed the grass.

TruGreen was supposed to apply the chemicals to fields at Kaynor Technical High, which is right next to the municipal stadium.

The mix-up left the president of the Connecticut Amateur Baseball Congress, Tony Santoro, uncertain if the municipal stadium’s field was going to be available to host the Mickey Mantle World Series in July.

“(It was) very disconcerting and wondering how we were going to handle it if the field wasn’t going to be available, what was going to be done and where we were going to have to look to play,” Santoro said to News 8.

To remedy its mistake, TruGreen ripped up the dead grass and plans to install new sod.

“What started as an innocent mix-up (we were originally scheduled to treat a field down the road) has turned into a much bigger relationship with the city,” TruGreen said in a statement to News 8. “Our goal was to not only rectify the situation, but to transform the field into pristine condition to help ensure the return of the Mickey Mantle World Series for years to come to the great city of Waterbury.”

There is a bright side to all this, according to Mark Lombardo, Waterbury supervisor of parks and golf courses.

“We have an antiquated water system out there,” he said. “So, there was some money that we had left over from this project that we were able to go out to bid for and we are now going to be installing an irrigation system to have the field properly irrigated.”

The baseball field will be completed in June.