Ground Etc.
ABI presents Ground Etc, where we talk all things turf care and ground prep. This podcast is for grounds keepers, landscape contractors, and anyone interested in working in the dirt. From the right equipment, to the right crew, to the strategies needed to run a successful business. We talk to experts of the industry about the ground, the work, et cetera!
Ground Etc.
Doing the Renovation Work On Sports Fields – With Leah Withrow
If your baseball field is in bad shape, making small adjustments isn’t enough to give you the consistent playability you need. Renovating your field gets down to the field’s base and gives you a fresh start. Leah Withrow, head groundskeeper at the home of the Reno Aces and the recent award recipient for the 2022 professional baseball field of the year, is here talking with us about doing the renovation work.
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- I'm Scott Holmes.
- I'm Matt Metzger, and you're listening to Ground Etc. This season we're going to be talking all things in field grooming, from routine maintenance to leading a groundskeeping team to serious renovation work. We talk to experts of the field, on the ground, on the work,
- [Both] Et cetera.
- Yeah, this is an episode that I'm really looking forward to, 'cause we had Leah with us, Leah Withrow.
- Yeah.
- We're gonna have her back for this episode. This episode we're focusing on renovation, really getting down to the foundation, the cornerstone, the beginning. How do you take a field that is in bad shape and get it back to where you can build it back up? 'Cause sometimes you have to just tear things down. Sometimes you can tweak. But in a lot of cases you just gotta wipe it out, start over, build the foundation right so that you have longevity and she's got some great stories. I mean she has some really good stories for us about renovation and her team, so.
- And talking with Taylor Coquillard and Corey and Chuck White earlier in the season, giving the stories from them on a lot of fields they worked on it was, you know, often when fields get way outta whack, it's not because of lack of intentionality and sometimes not even just a lack of training that actually as you go through a season or multiple seasons, that things just kind of build up, right? I mean, you've got a conditioner gets added and a little bit more and a little bit more until all of a sudden you accidentally, right, have an an inch, inch and a half. Taylor told a story, there was two inches of conditioner in her field.
- [Scott] Right.
- Just because they let it keep building up. Where Chuck was talking about the circle around home plate. They, throughout the course of the season, they want those crisp, clean lines and so he measured it, measured the radius from home plate out around the circle and one side was 12 feet, one side was 13, the other radius was getting up to 14 feet, and just gets a little bit cattywampus because you're trying to clean those circles up and it gets wider and wider and wider and it's just all, it's being regularly maintained but as you go through a season, things get a bit outta whack.
- Well, and not just seasons, but year after year. Yep. It starts compounding
- And so then the value of renovation, then, really, and you think about field renovation the same way you think about a home renovation, right? Sometimes you jump into a new place, you gotta take it back to the studs. And it's a lot of work and it's a little bit, 'cause honest to God, Scott, it is my least favorite house project is the full reno. Like when I walk into a room, like I don't mind painting, I don't mind hanging stuff on a wall, I don't mind tackling a floor every now and then but when you walk into a room, you're like, "This bugger needs to be pulled back to the studs."
- Yeah, I did it once.
- [Matt] Yeah?
- I won't do it again.
- [Matt] Didn't you tackle the whole house?
- Oh man, I took the sub floors out, re leveled the sub floors, put 3/4 inch floor through 2500 square foot and.
- Well it's no joke why people, it's not a surprise why people don't tackle it, right? And so your field's
- [Scott] Right.
- In the same situation that-
- The thing is if you don't then you don't have the safety for the players, you don't have the amount of games you can get in. You pay for it one way or the other, you pay for it by getting it right or you pay for it
- That's a good point.
- With a bad field and not safe play. So you gotta pay for it one way or the other. I would advise to renovate and I think that's what Leah has said to us to, so.
- Yeah, yeah, well and some of the, do you have a, I know you renovated the house, any fields that you had to jump onto? 'Cause I know that you have more experience with lacrosse than you do ball but any situation where you had to jump in to a lacrosse field and just tear it out?
- Oh, yeah, I literally had to go in and fill holes and re-seed and you know? Of course, I always did the lines. There's something therapeutic about doing lines. I don't know what that is. You know, and in lacrosse you don't have just straight lines, you have arcs, you know? So it was just, for me it was almost an artistic experience to put the lines down. So I enjoyed that, I didn't turn that over to the girls, even at the collegiate level who were probably capable 'cause it's something I like to do.
- 'Cause it's something to do.
- Yeah. But yes, when the AD or when the President wouldn't give us funding for renovation of the field and it happened to be a nice thing that I owned ABI, right? I was an owner of ABI.
- Yeah, helps out a little bit.
- So I had my own equipment, you know?
- Sure.
- So I went out and did some over seeding and yeah, I just took care of it myself.
- Well and renovation can be scary for folks too, I know there's, talking with Kevin and experiences he's had, been out demoing the force on different fields. We've got some pretty aggressive attachments for the force and things like the profile blade and the stealth blade that field maintainers, groundskeepers and even coaches that are used to just scratching the surface in the field, they're used to that regular maintenance and no one's ever shown them the value of tearing it it back to the studs if you will, right? You pull out something aggressive like a stealth blade or a profile blade and you start to see eyebrows go up and it gets in the ground and you go the first couple of feet and eyes get real big.
- But here's the thing, we were the first manufacturer who didn't build a piece of equipment just for maintenance. We built one that can maintain a field but could also renovate a field. Because we knew how important it was to be able to start over and to rip it up and get back and re-level and re-laser grade with the same piece that could maintain on a daily basis, so we were the first
- Well and get back to it quickly, right?
- Ones to do that.
- I mean I think that's one of the arguments that we hear most often from groundskeepers is that even if they understand the value of renovation, they say, "Yeah, yeah, I know it needs it, but I've got a tournament this weekend, I've got a game coming up soon, I don't have time to come in and by the time you bring in the tractors and you bring in the skid steers and you're gonna jack up the field because now I've got ruts on the outfield and now I've got heavy compaction where all those big pieces of equipment." And so I think that's where it's been fun to see that force fill in the gap where people who know the value of renovation, that wanna do the renovation, but then guys, I'm on a schedule, I've got games coming up and I have to flip a field fast. This renovation project can't take a number of days. I got an afternoon, guys. And so to see the force be able to come in and do that, as opposed to the traditional equipment that used to fill the gap.
- You know, you and I can sit here and talk all day but Leah gave us some great examples.
- [Matt] You telling me to shut up, Scott? Is that what you're telling me?
- I think we both should shut up and just let Leah talk, what do you think?
- I think that's a good idea.
- [Scott] All right.
- Well we are back again with the award-winning Leah Withrow. We're gonna drop that bomb, I mean that's a huge accomplishment, so Leah Withrow, this is her second episode. If you missed last episode, you definitely wanna go back and take a look, take a look or a listen at that episode because Leah talked about her beginnings in sports turf management and the quick growth into a leadership position. Leah is now the head groundskeeper at Greater Nevada Field, which is home of the Reno Aces, and the recent award recipient, she and her team, for the 2022 Professional Baseball Field of the Year, which is a massive award, that's fantastic.
- [Matt] That's incredible.
- [Leah] Thank you.
- So thrilled to have you back again. I know we talked mostly your history, your story, some really great insights that you shared on being a groundskeeper at a younger stage in your career and some of the challenges that you faced, recommendations for young professionals, students getting involved in the industry. We wanna pivot on this episode more to some of the major projects that you've tackled because a lot of ball fields go through significant renovations, but Greater Nevada Field and the work that you have to accomplish, you've got a wild number of renovations that you've gotta tackle on a regular basis and we wanna talk to you about it.
- Yeah, I've been waiting for this all season. This is the topic I've been waiting to talk about.
- Oh it's just so much work, it's so difficult.
- Well in my limited experience in baseball fields, it's relatively a new concept at the higher levels. I mean you always talked about renovation for little league and softball and high school in municipality, especially.
- [Matt] Because they're not getting as much love throughout the season, right?
- Yeah, but you didn't think about it at the minor league and the professional league, but that's changing.
- Yeah, there's a lot of fields that go decades before they get even touched.
- Really?
- But now there's this quick turnover. This is one of the things I wanna talk about is, you know, and I get it, making money, you gotta turn your field into a profit center, I get what they're doing. But man, they're putting a lot of pressure on you as groundskeepers to have to take a piece of property and make it multi-functional.
- [Leah] Yeah. It's no longer just a baseball field,
- [Scott] No, that's what I'm saying.
- It is now an event center.
- [Scott] Yeah, right.
- [Matt] So I guess, history question then, when you were going through, because you have the degree, right? North Dakota State University, you've got the Sports Grass, Sports Turf Grass, there it is, Sports Turf Grass.
- It's still Sports Grass, but yes.
- Oh perfect, I got it.
- Phew.
- When you were going through those classes, and I know there's the internships that you accomplished along the way, did you have any idea that this amount of renovation work was such a significant part of the role?
- No.
- [Scott] Surprise.
- That was not a class unfortunately, event management was not in that curriculum. But I think that's an on the job experience, like I've talked about previously, is it's 50 50, it is science but it is experience and my experience at Greater Nevada Field, having soccer there for four years, having to flip back and forth between baseball and soccer, a rectangle sport on a baseball field is not
- Yeah, right.
- A light undertaking by any means and it's happening every other week so we were flipping back and forth, it was a never ending home stand basically.
- Every other week.
- Every time baseball left, soccer came in, soccer left, baseball was back. And it was back and forth. I think we average about 12 conversions every year and I did that for three of the four years soccer was there.
- So what, are the soccer teams
- No kidding.
- Playing on synthetic?
- [Leah] No.
- Or were you putting it sod down every time?
- [Leah] So we were putting sod down every time.
- And it was stable enough for them?
- Yeah so we would put it in two inches of clay sod, two inch cut, it was a big waste I'm gonna be honest. It really hurt my heart to roll out sod and sometimes it was only down 24 hours where we'd have to take all the edges out along the infields grass edge just so that it would lay flat. It kinda crowned in the middle
- Got it.
- But lay flat with the infield and the outfield so we would go two inches down, three feet wide off the edge, take all that infield mix out, all of our baselines out.
- Wow.
- Thankfully our field, our dimensions are pretty big so we were about six inches from the mound was our end line.
- Got it.
- So we didn't have to take the mound out, there are a lot
- [Scott] That's good.
- Of minor league fields that do do that.
- [Matt] Wow.
- [Scott] Yeah, I think South Bend does.
- Yeah, El Paso has a retractable mound so their mound is hydraulic, it drops down and then they-
- [Matt] Oh now that's cool.
- They turf on top of it. There's a lot of stadiums that really go the extra mile to put in these extra vents and make it feasible.
- So you're rolling out two inch thick cuts, heavy clay cuts of sod right over the top of infield outfield?
- Yeah, so we would put landscape fabric down and then you'd lay the sod out and then you'd just soak the absolute crap out of it.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Just to keep it swollen 'cause once it starts getting hot and it shrinks, you start seeing,
- [Matt] Seeing the seams, right?
- Yeah, that's where things get a little dicey, so you're jus flooding it for two days or however long it's down, most of the time it's less than that. Just to try and keep moisture in it. You play a game and then post-game I'm taking the sod cutter out there and cutting 'em into two by two squares so that we could load 'em into the workbench and go dump 'em in the back.
- So not only do you have to satisfy the ball players, you have to satisfy the soccer players as well. Ah boy.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And so then once that was down, you and your team are still responsible for that? The same crew that you have to take care of your ball field, you're now taking care for what, 24, 48 hours, you're taking care of the soccer field as well?
- Yes.
- Wow.
- And that was a wild few years when we did have soccer. It was a great experience because I can say I did it and I know how to do it if we do ever hold an exhibition match or if I ever go somewhere else where they are a shared stadium or they do host exhibition games, I at least have the understanding and the knowledge of how to do it efficiently 'cause I've done it 50 plus times now. But I would not recommend. I would not recommend doing that constantly.
- So how many people, how long does it take to pull something like that off? To turn a baseball field into a ready for soccer field?
- So at the time, the inaugural season for soccer was my seasonal assistantship in 2017. And it was Joe, he had two full time assistants, he had myself and so there was four full time people and then we'd have labor people and or the team store part timers and ticket sale part timers coming down and moving sod and straightening
- No way.
- Everything out and cutting along the back arch edge and then post game it was all hands on deck, everybody came down and started hauling sod off.
- Good grief. What was the, how long then did it take once you got the sod off, you got that fabric back up, talk to us about the difference between a normal prepping for game day and then now what kind of work do you have to do to prepare since all that heavy thick clay sod was on top?
- Yeah, so basically we used the extra staff and office staff to just get the sod off and then the four of us, we were taking cart loads of infill mix and filling back in the edges, super good at edges by the way. I am a trained professional at edge work so we were just filling in edges, getting the ABI out, start grating everything back, sweeping up any rock or debris from the clay that had slipped through the landscape fabric so using equipment as an extra person and then by the time all the sod was off, all the edges are back in, we've re-graded, we've put conditioner back out.
- [Scott] Got it.
- Scrubbing the soccer lines off the outfield grass, that's fun. And then all of a sudden baseball's back and we're setting up for BP the next day.
- [Scott] Holy cow.
- [Matt] Great.
- Sometimes it's, yeah, it's a long-
- And you know, I've seen a lot of parks do concerts as well and bring in these huge stages and set them right on the infield mix. You know, we're talking tons and tons and tons of weight that are on these infields and then the next day they gotta be ready for a game. How do you do that? I mean how do you flip a concert into a ball field?
- Yeah, we've hosted a couple. Last year we had one on second base, we'd laid all the flooring so it's all drivable flooring for the heavier stuff, the main stage and then pedestrian flooring we did from basically second base to home plate. And it rained right after we put all that flooring out so I knew
- [Matt] No.
- It was a possibility so I went to Home Depot and got painters' tarp and tacked that into the infield the best I could and just as a preventative to try to salvage any of my infield. It did help, it helped being able to pull the flooring up and not out of mud, it was just off the plastic. But there were indents of the flooring underside in the infield so again, breaking out the ABI, thankfully we have that tool, the quick laser grade, I spent the next two days just grading out our infield after having a concert of flooring on it. So that stuff you budget into the concert cost though is like, "Hey,
- Well sure.
- You're gonna have to pay for materials and time of our staff having to clean up your mess."
- [Matt] Right, right. So give us the biggest success story because it sounds like, yep, you've got a lot of experience converting concerts, events and soccer fields back into baseball and again, must be pretty beautiful because you're getting awards for how great the field is. Is there any one particular event, one particular renovation flip that at the end of it, it's play ball time and you're looking at the field like you can't tell, this is some of our best work.
- I would say we had Nitro Circus this year on July 1st and then we hosted 4th of July and 4th of July is like our only sold out game of the year every year so to go 72 hours between Nitro Circus and the biggest game of the year.
- Wow.
- That one was a tough one. Heat of July in Reno, Nevada.
- Oh yeah.
- Oh my goodness.
- I couldn't water for the day before.
- [Scott] It'd just evaporate.
- Yeah, just to put flooring down, I didn't want anything to press in and make anything soft.
- [Scott] Oh absolutely, yeah.
- So I didn't water the day before, they come in, I can't water anything that day because they have electrical, they have stuff everywhere. So I'm trying to hand-treat hot spots but you can only get so much and then by the time
- Oh no.
- They leave, my outfield was pretty scorched and we put in an American flag pattern in the outfield to hide some of it and it turned out okay and then we were playing baseball and nobody knew.
- No way, that's huge.
- Wow, that's awesome.
- So stuff like that where you're like, "I don't know how we did that, but we did."
- Now do you face any, and I know there's, not at all familiar with water regulations and how much you're allowed to use, do you have any in your field when it comes to renovation work or maintenance work? Do you have limits on how much water you can use or that's open-ended to you and whatever you need?
- I try to be really, obviously, generous with my water, what I take
- Sure.
- And what I use 'cause I am aware that Northern California, California, us, we've been in a drought for a really long time.
- Right.
- Also I use a drought tolerant blue grass on my field
- [Scott] Oh yeah.
- So it doesn't need as much, as well soil sensors being able to know how much my soil moisture's at so I don't run zones that I don't need to, just being cautious of, conscious, cautious, both, of my water usage.
- [Scott] Sure. Is there a type of infield material that's better for moisture management?
- Yeah.
- I mean if you had pure sand I would think you'd have to water all the time.
- Yeah, our field is completely sand based and then our infield is DuraEdge professional, which is a huge time saver and water saver.
- [Matt] Got it.
- It's also just timing everything out. So I'll put a lake on it post game, I will flood the absolute crap out of it but it'll hold me over until right before BP when I just have to do a touch up.
- Got it.
- Okay.
- So timing it out where if you put all the water out at night and just let it sit while it's cooling down. Thankfully we're at elevation so our night time temps drop quite a bit and then cools down, you're in the shade for most of the morning, so I guess it's just being cautious of your shade lines, cautious of your timing.
- So I know you've got quite the following when it comes to online following. You talked last episode about a network of people that you enjoy being connected to, the industry worth of professionals, and people are, you've gotten to the point in your career that people are asking you for advice, right? When it comes to renovation work, what is something that you've learned that you think is often missed? Maybe something that people would never consider going that extreme with the kind of work or maybe something that should be done in a renovation, a regular renovation environment that people often skip the step?
- So we did a full field renovation in the Spring of '21. The field was 12, 13 years old at that time and the poa had pretty much taken over and seen its wear. We were draining at 0.0 inches an hour in our outfield, that black layer had built up so high, so was time. So gathering all the information, I spent all of 2020 when we weren't playing calling, texting, emailing everybody I knew who had done a renovation in the last five years, getting all their information, who did they use, what suppliers did they use, who did they recommend, what would you do different, all of that extensive research.
- [Matt] So smart, yeah.
- The research part of it is probably the heaviest lift of a renovation and I knew my job in the renovation was just to pick the right people to do it and if I did my job right it was all gonna go well and sure enough it did. So I think the think that gets overlooked is that research aspect of it as well as picking the right crew. I'm really happy with, I used Home Field, DuraEdge and Desert Green Turf for my sod. They had worked before on other projects together, both the sod manager and the infield manager. Cam and Nate are phenomenal humans and really work well together so our six-week project ended up taking four.
- [Matt] No way, that's fantastic.
- Cam's a great guy.
- Cam is the best.
- He's been a friend of ABI and DuraEdge, he's been a friend of ABI for many, many years so yeah.
- He is good people, he knows what he's doing, he is so smart. He's the one who taught me how to laser grade.
- [Scott] Okay great.
- And takes the time, very patient, very, again, passionate about what he does.
- [Scott] Oh yeah, for sure.
- He loves what he does and the same thing for Desert Green Turf. They're out of Moses lake, Washington. And phenomenal humans as well, very passionate about what they do, have a really great product. So thankfully all my pieces fell into place that way.
- [Scott] Yeah right.
- But it took a lot of time, I spent the time doing the research. It wasn't like, "Oh by the way, we're doing a field renovation tomorrow."
- Yeah.
- Thankfully my ownership group did not drop that on me right away. But and I had the time and COVID to reach out to people.
- That probably, I mean COVID was not a blessing for anyone but it did give you some time to, yeah.
- That's for sure. And it gave me time to dip my toes in, gave me time to do what I needed to do for this renovation.
- [Scott] Yeah, to get the field ready, yeah.
- But I also give a lot of credit to my President and our team because this renovation was supposed to happen in the Fall of 2020. Obviously that was not gonna be an option. And then it was, "Okay, do we do it in the Fall of 21?" But then he was like, "Well we have the chance to do events in the Fall possibly. We're hoping this clears up by the Summer and through the Fall." Do we take a gamble? We haven't made any money this last year. Do we take the gamble
- [Scott] Right.
- And do the renovation in the Spring of 21? Or do we try to make some money up and do it in the Fall of 21? But we lose the chance of hosting any events because our field will be torn up. And he dove in and just did it in the Spring of 21 while we had the time. 'Cause we were still kind of locked down so we had a dead 90 days where you couldn't host anything on the field anyway or in the stadium, so.
- Right, right. I was really lucky that I had done enough research and proven all my numbers, my points, we've had meetings and he trusted me to execute. Because we look back now and we joke about it all the time, it would've cost us 100,000 dollars more to do it later on because trucking costs went up, fuel costs
- [Scott] Sure, yeah.
- Went up, products, supply chain demands, it was all screwed up.
- Trust me, we know all about those.
- So we really hit the jackpot on that one, being able to just do it and get it done with. And saved us a lot of money in the end.
- You know, I would think that you put all this money into renovation but then you've gotta maintain it, right? And talk to us about once you've gotten your field renovated, how do you not let that investment go to waste?
- Well and more specifically too, 'cause I was going the same direction, you mentioned Cam was the one who taught you how to laser grade. How often do you laser grade as far as your basic maintenance practice?
- So my turf professor always told us the grass grows by the inch and dies by the foot. And it's so true. If you're not on top of it you can lose it a lot faster than you can get it back. So I was, thankfully our season got delayed a month in 21 because of COVID so I had a little bit more time for growing, I had also followed a pretty strict fertilizing and maintenance plan on it to get it to the point where we were safe and then throughout the season I stuck to that and just took guidance from other industry professionals and friends of mine who had gone through it before and then I just trusted my education and my background, my experience that I was doing everything right. Turns out I was doing okay.
- Worked out.
- Good for you.
- I was doing okay. And then yeah, Cam teaching me to laser grade was a huge asset for myself and my team. I have this amazing tool but I can't use it to its full extent. I now do, we laser graded this Fall so we'll do it right after the season just to clean up everything. We noticed as the snow puddles are melting there are some of the spots still to hit so I'll do just a touch up this Spring. And then obviously after events I like to do just do probably a mid season touch up. Normally we do a concert or Nitro Circus or whatever else we can sell on that all star break, two week break, and so that gives me enough time for them to do whatever they need to do and me to do whatever I need to do. Flip the field for the second half. I mean 75 games is how many home games we host. Plus extra events. So there's a lot of wear and tear on that infield so it's nice that I can do it all in house in a day, just go out.
- What would it cost you if you had to laser grade it, if you had to hire somebody to come laser grade it?
- To do, I mean it varies but if you're adding material, if you need to bring in material and have Cam come out and do it for a day or two would probably be 4500 dollars.
- And you're doing it on your own five, seven times a year?
- [Leah] Yeah.
- Okay.
- [Leah] Yeah.
- That's a good money saver, yeah.
- It's a big money savings for my company and myself. Time savings for me 'cause-
- [Scott] How hard is it? I mean you were taught it. Can anybody do it?
- [Leah] Yeah. Basically the machine does it for a lot of the heavy lifting.
- What's the name of the machine again? Just kidding.
- Well.
- Come on, I had to try.
- Oh my God.
- I was told not to say this but we call her Abi.
- Oh no, come on.
- That's very funny.
- No, I understand why.
- [Leah] Well we call our SandPro Sandy. And so it was just kinda a natural progression, we named all of our equipment.
- Sure it was.
- See it's perfect.
- No it's perfect.
- You named your truck didn't you?
- No.
- You've never named your truck?
- No.
- Oh we're gonna talk about that off camera.
- No, we, what's really nice is it's literally just sitting. As long as it's gassed up I can use it for anything, we just did our warming track as well, which is huge because now, I dunno if you know the MOB bought minor league baseball and there's now, it's called the Player Development League and there's a contract we all have to sign and a standard we all have to uphold. So they have inspectors come out and check all of our grades, check our mount height, check base pass, check ball pens, check everything so that everything is uniform within minor league baseball and major league baseball, which is totally fair because there were teams that were falling behind and now this forces those teams and organizations to invest money back into their field, which desperately needs to happen. So it's a good and a bad thing but it means that I can now in house do all of this before they come and check. And you know Cam, he is the busiest man I've ever met in my life. So it's really hard to get him on a schedule to come out and do it when I can just be like, "I'm just gonna do it on Tuesday."
- Yeah, that's fantastic.
- You know, it was seven years ago, six, seven years ago when I figured out and I learned how, not nit-picky, but how critical all aspects of the ground maintenance was. I won't say who it was 'cause I don't wanna get anybody in trouble.
- Sure.
- But I actually had a major league groundskeeper, head groundskeeper, call me. He had just bought one of our machine, the ABI Force. And he said, he called me and he said, "Scott, I just want you to know that you've saved my job." How does a machine save your job? I don't understand. His ground rule doubles were out of control, he had the worst record
- Wow.
- In major league baseball with his ground rule doubles because he couldn't get the warming track hard enough for the athletes to have speed or it was too soft so they had no speed but the ball wouldn't go over the wall. And with the Force, he was able to dow that in and he said,
- Dow it in.
- You must be judged
- [Leah] Oh yeah.
- On so many elements that just have to be just right, especially at your level.
- Yeah, the detail, the detail work, down to the inch, matters in baseball unfortunately. It's such a game of detail, I can't think of a better word.
- Words are hard.
- [Leah] Words are hard.
- That's the phrase I'm taking away from today, words are hard.
- Words are hard. But the detail work that has to happen, because it is a game of inches sometimes, when you're sliding into second it's a matter of a half an inch sometimes so when your warming track is a little bit off or your infield's a little bit off, your back arc's too far back or in, all of those details matter. And one of the beautiful things about baseball is every field's different, all the dimensions are not the same. Right field is deeper in some parts and shorter in some parts, which makes everything unique and special but it can make it really hard to judge, especially infield depth when you're given a foot of lenience when it's supposed to be 95 feet but you could have 94 or you could have 96 or anywhere in between, that's a big difference for a lot of infielders. So being able to dial in all my measurements and obviously having a new field built, I was built to the PDL specs so I'm within standards
- I can maintain it, yeah.
- And then all I have to do is keep those standards, it's a lot easier than some of the fields that are way off and are gonna have to spend a million dollars to fix everything.
- And you talked about fields being different, budgets are also different, right? And so a lot of folks listening or watching right now, they might work on fields or be spectators at fields or be responsible for coaching teams on fields that don't have minor league budgets. So if there are, whether collegiate or high school level or club level groundskeepers or coaches or ADs or directors that are listening to this right now and you got the award, they wanna follow along, they wanna hear from you and insights that you share.
- [Scott] She smiles every time you say award. And she should, yeah.
- [Matt] I love it. Yeah, they wanna get tips from someone who's, obviously you and your team have proven that you can create a beautiful field and they wanna learn from you but they don't have the budget that you've got. What are some recommendations? Let's say that calling up Cam is not an option. Let's say they're doing a full field reno, even if I know that my field isn't quite the way I know it could be, it's not an option and I do have to do the work myself. What are some key things to keep in mind or some key issue areas that should be targeted as a top priority?
- Oh, that's a lot of loaded questions.
- [Matt] Well we've got all afternoon.
- I would say the biggest thing I've learned is talking numbers. I'm not, like I said in the previous episode, I was a math person, but accounting, money, budgets, stuff like that I wasn't super familiar with. But that's the front office speaks, that's the language your school district speaks, so you have to learn to translate. How I justified buying the ABI or my old boss, Joe, bought the ABI was look at how many events are happening on the field, this is how many hours we work, it costs each assistant to be here X amount of dollars. If we can shorten that amount of, we were all hourly, if we can shorten the amount of hours that they work by using this machine X amount of times this is your result. And that's how I just bought an autonomous mower for my berm because my seasonal assistant, I did the math, we spent 1500 dollars on him just mowing the berm this season. Just mowing the berm.
- Right.
- Just paying him to mow a seating area. 1500 dollars over a six month period, seven month period, which seems ridiculous. And so when the mower cost 3,000, I say well in two years it has paid for itself.
- [Matt] You've paid for it.
- I get an extra body back on the field, I don't lose him for an hour or two every other day mowing the berm so that justified that. But I can't go in there being like, "I need this."
- [Both] Right.
- [Matt] Please, please, please doesn't work.
- No, I had to do the math, I had to do the spreadsheet, I had to explain what happens and why and then results.
- Can you translate that down to, your experience is minor league and I get that, you started really at a higher level.
- [Matt] Yeah you did.
- But 80 percent of the people watching and listening are municipal on down. How do you translate that into renovation of the municipality fields or the little league fields and getting the funds and getting the right people and the right, I mean renovation for them probably looks a little different than renovation for you. And got any advice for them?
- Well I'm actually, my local little league field reached out to myself this winter and we're gonna rebuild two of their mounds for their little league fields.
- Oh nice.
- That's cool.
- And it's one, reaching out to your local expert, most small areas have a minor league facility or professional facility close by. Just reach out to them and pick their brain. I literally just laid out a list of materials that we would need, I volunteered my own time, my assistant volunteered his time as well, so I'm more than happy to help my local little league and then park
- [Matt] That's cool.
- And rec district. And I told them, I was like, "I'm just gonna need people so bring in your park and rec, grounds."
- Yeah, volunteers, yeah.
- Then I need all their equipment 'cause I'm not hauling all of that down from Reno, so we're gonna need a skid steer, we're gonna need the ability to haul some of this material out, haul material in, couple of tamp shovels and bodies, so it's working hand in hand with them and then also laying out,
- [Scott] That's fair.
- I did lay out the exact numbers, if you wanna do it right, if you wanna do it in the middle, if you wanna get by.
- Good, bad or best.
- So smart.
- Giving options is always good, especially when you're explaining it to a school district or a park district because sometimes their budget is crap, we're not doing it this year.
- Just crap. Just crap.
- Really familiar with oh crap budgets. Lot of familiarity.
- Or it's like we haven't done anything in 20 years, we could put towards money to expand it for another 20 years, make it last. So giving 'em options and then I did help organize some of the ordering through Ewing and getting the right materials, DuraEdge and I think it's more the education aspect of it because they just truly don't know and that's not any fault of anybody's and it's just reaching out for help. I think a lot of the districts are scared to ask for help and are scared to ask for the money.
- You know, in the last episode, we did talk about the openness of your industry and your leaders.
- [Leah] And it's huge, it's huge.
- And so they shouldn't be afraid to reach out
- [Leah] No.
- To people like you and say, "Hey, we need help, we love the game, we want our fields to be safe and playable. What can you do to help us at least understand what we have to do?"
- I spent, I got the call, I drove down, I spent one hour of my day walking the field with him, I took notes of what all he wanted done in an ideal world, what probably is gonna happen and what I needed to order. And I just went back to my office, it took me maybe another hour to put everything together. So within two hours of my own personal time, I have two little league mounds getting built now.
- [Matt] That's fantastic.
- So it's not a hard thing to do as a professional to help the little guy, and I hate saying that 'cause they're not little guys. They are so important.
- I know they're not, I understand what you mean.
- Because Mike Trout played on a little league field at some point, he needed that field.
- That's right, they're feeders.
- Yeah, what you guys do is super freaking important and unfortunately super under funded
- [Scott] No doubt.
- And so trying to help them out and prove that you can do this on a small budget, you can get donations, you can get help, you can get advisory and education from people, local. It's possible, it's not impossible.
- [Scott] No right, right.
- [Matt] I love it.
- I feel like sometimes it feels impossible.
- Yeah, well I'm sure it's overwhelming to them. I mean they're sitting there, first of all they have all the parents screaming and yelling, you know? Saying, "Why has my kid got a ground ball in the face?"
- [Matt] It's a passionate crowd. It's a passionate crowd.
- It's a passionate crowd. But we've heard the stories.
- Also when I did my big field renovation, to help with some of my costs, the disposal fees were like 50 percent of this field renovation. Hauling stuff out is expensive. So I reached out to our local high schools in Reno and donated all of our infield dirt to them.
- No way.
- Nice.
- So each field got about 25 tons, they each got a truck load of infield mix. I didn't pay the disposal fee, they paid the trucking, they were able to pay.
- It's a win-win.
- That's incredible.
- Yeah, 'cause it's local so the trucking wasn't expensive and then you're paying half of what you would pay to pull that dirt out of a plant or whatever and truck it over the mountain. So it saved me, it helped them, I think reaching out to your local professional, semi professional fields always have extra materials and are happy to help.
- [Scott] Sure. That triggered a question.
- [Matt] Wow.
- How often do you have to flip an infield? I mean how often? I don't even know the answer to that question. I'm sure the guys from DuraEdge would know but I don't know.
- And by flip you mean?
- I mean completely tearing it out and starting it over. I mean I know you can amend it, amending it I'm sure is a common yearly thing. But how long does an infield last you?
- I mean ideally the field's life time. I mean I know once you put, especially, and this isn't a plug for DuraEdge but I love DuraEdge
- [Scott] Right.
- Because it's what we use.
- [Scott] We're friends, yep.
- So DuraEdge designs and has an exact chemsitry of their infield mix for a baseball field. It's not just a general clay dirt that you could throw in a garden or whatever else. This was engineered for baseball.
- For play, yeah.
- So it withholds for baseball. I'm hoping mine lasts me 10 years or more as long as the field goes. I know a lot of fields are renovating the grass around it but keeping their infield because it's still fine. I did this Fall scrape the conditioner break down off a top quarter inch or so.
- 'Cause I mean materials do break down. I mean sand becomes fine
- The conditioner on top, yeah,
- And conditioner breaks down to clay and.
- So we swept all of our conditioner off, we took the top quarter inch off of our infill mix, just the tacky, dusty, where it gets real sticky on the top and then just dumped a couple cart loads of new DuraEdge on top, graded that in and now we're rocking and rolling.
- [Matt] Fantastic.
- So what I'm hearing you say is doing it right the first time is important.
- Yes, yes, it's a lot easier to touch up than completely fix.
- Yeah, yeah no doubt. Well Leah, as we're wrapping this up, I got two questions for you. Well it's one question but there's two answers. What is the worst renovation, I mean the nightmare of all nightmares that you had to go in there and turn it into a dream field and what was the easiest? What was the best renovation you've ever done?
- So one of the worst ones I did twice is we did soccer to baseball, so July 3rd we would play a soccer game and July 4th we would play a baseball game and I did it two years in a row and I would not recommend a 24 hour flip from back to forth.
- [Matt] Jeez, yeah.
- It was an all nighter, it was a long day and then have to come back in, set up BP and play baseball, it just feels like you can't catch a breath. It feels like you're just always moving and the adrenaline is going for you while you're working and then as soon as you get home, that adrenaline drains.
- Collapse, collapse.
- Drains out of you and then you just can't get out of bed the next morning to go do it all over again so those short conversions, those short renovations are really hard on staff, people, mentally, physically, emotionally. And then yeah.
- [Scott] Easiest one? What was the easiest one?
- Surprisingly the full field renovation.
- [Scott] Really?
- Was actually the highlight of my career so far, besides the award, that's recent. But I loved my crew. We had 10 to 15 guys at a time, we had like five DuraEdge, Home Field guys and then 5 to 10 of the sod guys helping. We had so much fun. We had one of the best crews just working well together on the day to day basis, everything was in sync, everything kept flowing and I feel like that doesn't happen, I hear a lot of horror stories from full field renovations like that and crews getting in fights and crews yelling at each other, like I never had that once.
- [Matt] Yikes.
- I was like, "We all worked hand in hand together really well." It was all very open, if there was a problem they were like, "We can do this or we can do this." And let me make the decisions and respected myself and my staff, which was huge. And as well, at night, after the renovation, we'd go have beers in the shop and talk about the day and have that we were in the trenches together bonding moment, you know?
- Yeah, sure.
- And we did some, enjoyed downtown Reno a few times and just kinda,
- Perfect.
- That's great.
- 'Cause it's a short period of time where you're doing an intense amount of work and to let off steam together really built that bond so that the next day we were all telling stories about last night and joking around and I truly enjoyed both Nate and Cam's crews and having them work so well together and having everything, not saying everything went perfect 'cause nothing
- [Scott] Oh yeah, no, never does, no.
- Always goes perfect but the morality of everything, like everybody being at high morale the whole four weeks really got that project to where it is now, filled the year.
- And no wonder that you got it done ahead of schedule if there's that much synchronization of the team and that much getting along together. I mean that goes such a long way in getting things done before a deadline.
- That and just the open communication. When people need, you gotta turn off your laser 'cause I gotta grade the outfield then your laser on the infield's screwing this up and nobody got mad at each other. It was just an understanding of we have to get this job done and whatever I can do to help you help me help get this job done and that was unreal and I'm really, really grateful that my first full field renovation to that extent went as well as it did.
- Incredible. It's all downhill from here now.
- Well I just wanted, on a personal note, next time you see Cam please tell him I said hi.
- [Leah] I will.
- Yeah, good guy, good guy.
- Well and I mean it's funny, we've talked, I guess this was the last episode, we talked about what's next for you, what's next for the Greater Nevada Field, and you've gone through a full field renovation, you've received the award of the Best Baseball Field of the Year in 2022 and you're growing in a team. The league is growing and you've got a bright future ahead of you and so we're thrilled to actually get to know you right now, early on, 'cause we're excited to be friends as you keep going.
- [Scott] Yeah it's been great.
- You'll say, "I knew her back when."
- [Scott] I knew her when.
- [Matt] I remember when.
- [Scott] She's already passed us, she's won national awards, she's already better than we are, Matt.
- [Matt] Well we are, obviously. We are thrilled to have you, thanks for joining us on the show.
- [Leah] Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate it.
- [Scott] Thanks for coming, it was great.
- Yeah, well thanks for sharing your wisdom and again, I love that you are focused on taking what you've learned and being so quick to share and even to hear that you are volunteering your time and helping
- [Scott] Yeah it's awesome.
- Your local community and looking for ways to take care of fields in your area, that's remarkable, so.
- It's the important stuff.
- [Scott] It is, yeah.
- [Matt] Yes. So it's a pleasure to get to know you, hope that all of you either listening or watching have enjoyed getting to know Leah as well. And remember, if you're listening you can watch, if you're watching you can listen. We have a lot of fun around here. This is it for season number one of Ground Etc. so thanks for tuning in. Share us, not for us, but to get the wisdom that Leah and Chuck and Taylor and others
- Yeah, pass the word.
- Have been able to offer, that's why we're here is to share this information. That's what's been consistent, Scott, all season long. Everyone we've had on board is just so eager for others to know what they've learned, right? 'Cause like you said, the industry is tight and people want to help each other out and it's all of the industry professionals that we've talked to are eager for new people to come on board, they're eager for more people to know because the passion, the love of the game. So thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time round.
