Grass is In at Major League Baseball Stadiums 24
In 2010 28 of the 30 MLB teams will be playing on natural grass.
There’s a famous quote from one of my all time favorite baseball players, Tug McGraw, that goes something like this:
REPORTER: Tug, Which do you prefer: Grass or AstroTurf?
TUG: I’ve never smoked AstroTurf…
You have to love the Tugger!
Since its hay day back in the 70’s, artificial turf has been prevalent in professional sports, particularly in baseball. It’s first appearance in the Houston Astrodome in 1965, and plastic grass has been the bane of baseball purists everywhere from just about day one.
The Astrodome was the world’s first domed sports stadium and, as luck would have it, grass doesn’t grow in the shade. While the name “AstroTurf” is a trademarked product, the phrase gets used to cover just about all of the nasty dangerous stuff that players have been ravaging their bodies on for decades. There’s the painful “Turf Toe,” which is essentially a type of tendonitis common for athletes playing on artificial surfaces. Earlier versions used rubber based under-matting that could leach chemicals in to the water table. The stuff also had the pleasant distinction of needed to be disinfected at regular intervals to prevent mold and smell. Read the rest of this entry →