SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/86038
Facility&Operations 8-foot sheets of decking and transformed into a wicked night club scene with headliner Katy Perry hosted by Peyton Manning and Mark Cuban. The following night we hosted the post-game party for the New England Patriots, with acts like Earth, Wind, & Fire, LMFAO, Maroon 5, and Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. The next morning at 7 am crews were at the door to begin tear down. Once the two 60-ton cranes had de-constructed the structure we had to remove the gravel and concrete. All 1 million pounds of con- crete were broken down with a jack hammer and hauled to the re- cycling plant. The hardest part was removing the gravel base that was now just as hard as concrete. Using a wheel loader, skid-steer, man-power, and a sweeper the contractor, Just Pushing Dirt, had given us the field back with nearly every piece of gravel picked up and a once pristine field now smelled like a pig farm and not one part of the field was destroyed, scuffed, or out of place except the dead turf. Getting the field back around February 25, my assistant and I tilled the outfield to a depth of about 1 inch. We then used a skid- steer and wheel loader to push the old turf and organic material into piles before contractor Nolan Thomas and his team showed up. The old turf was trucked away to an organic recycling dump site. Nolan was then able to use a GPS guided dozer and scrape off approximately 3 inches of old compacted/contaminated USGA sand. That sand was then trucked to our parking lot and donated to a parks department and picked up free of charge! HUGE SAV- INGS! They would use the 2500 tons of old sand as topdressing for their fields. Taking only about a week's time, the 300 tons (1") of USGA sand was laser graded and sodded with 1-inch-thick cut sod from Tuckahoe Turf farms. Some areas of the renovation that allowed the 28 SportsTurf | October 2012 Indians to save some cash: We removed the old turf and had it all in piles before contractor showed up in the spring. In the fall we re- moved and donated all the old turf, no dump fees. All the old sand (600 tons) instead of paying dump fees was hauled off free of charge to golf courses and parks departments. Edging of the new field was all done by the Indians grounds crew. We installed and ad- justed all irrigation heads and fixed all the breaks from tilling of the new rootzone. We applied all the rootzone amendments (Endo- Roots & 16-28-12 Starter) and helped out where ever Nolan or Tuckahoe needed us. March 12 and took roughly 3 days to complete. The sod was pushed mowed the day of installation at a height of 1.25 inch and rolled with a 3-ton roller. We fertilized 3x before opening day with roughly each app at .6 lbs/N/1000 of Nature Safe 12.2.6. We also began introducing our custom blend of Kentucky bluegrass seed (Midnight Star, Bewitched, Bedazzled, and Impact) monthly start- ing the week of the sod installation. After the first week the reel mower was put on the sod and cut to a height of 1 inch and the baseball season was underway. As I write this article 5 ½ months after the last piece of sod was laid and the hottest/driest summer on record, the field is perform- ing beyond expectations. Only needing to sod the area in front of mound 1x and the Kentucky bluegrass sod has showed only little signs of wear and stress throughout the whole season (85 games). After successfully completing one of the largest events ever to take place on a baseball field, I now wonder what is in store for us next. ■ The sod which came in dormant was installed the week of Joey Stevenson is head groundskeeper for the Indianapolis Indians. www.sportsturfonline.com