Goodbye bermuda

These pictures were taken right after the first low cut of the year. The weather has finally dipped under 100 so it's time to start putting the bermuda to bed for the winter. According to Western Sod, the process should take a few weeks. I cut back the watering to twice a week, and I'll be gradually lowering the cutting height over the next few mowings. I shouldn't have to dethatch that much, but we'll see what happens when it's a little shorter.

Also, I'm going to push ahead with the warning track idea. The grass just never filled in along the wall, even after adding the additional soil, so it's time to get cracking. I'm going to take the sod up from foul line to foul line and 2 feet out from the wall. In center field, I'm going to create a large angular cut out from wall to wall. It will be 5 feet out from the corner. The hope with that is to eventually install a pitching mound there for when the boys are older. Heck we may do it sooner just because pitching mounds are awesome, and awesomely cheap to construct.

Failure to plan

Once again, failure to plan is biting me square in the rear-end. I have a few spots along the outfield wall that just won't grow very well. It's hit and miss, and mostly miss. At first I thought it must be just poor drainage. Nah. Too little water? Nope. Act of God? Not nearly. The answer is so simple that it completely passed me by.

You see, everywhere else in the yard, the grass grows like crazy. Despite the rocky soil, the roots are doing very well and growing deep and strong. Therein lies the problem. All along the wall and in certain spot in particular, the soil is very shallow, for a very good reason. Whomever built the wall wanted it to stay and really got crazy with the footing. It's shallow, wide and thick. Great for structural stability, bad for grass. Especially hybrid bermuda, which likes to throw down some deep roots.

The way I found out this was the cause was while I was coring the yard a few weeks back. I couldn't get more than an inch into the ground along the wall. Ooops. That was a sinking feeling.

So, I went to the store and got some turf soil to throw down in hopes that by adding a better, deeper base for the roots the grass will return. It might be all for naught though. If so, I'm going to dig up the grass along the wall, to about 18" out from it and make a warning track. It will look nice, but it will be purely aesthetic. An 18" warning track gives you about a tenth of a second warning before you break yourself against the wall. Oh well, it'll give me a chance to test out my homeowners insurance I guess.

Water + Polymer Coated Soil

This picture is from the left side of home plate right after watering this morning. I always a have a little runoff that gathers back there. Well, I used to have runoff that used to soak the whole left side of the batters box. After I laid down the hilltopper, this is what I now get. The water beads up on it for at least an hour. I can go out and brush it away if I have too. That's pretty nice.

The only disadvantage I have found with hilltopper is that while it doesn't like to soak up water, it does soak up heat. Man, does it get hot. Not that playing ball in Arizona in 110 degree weather is an option but...going out there barefoot for a few hacks in the middle of the day can be real interesting. So now, it is definitely not a "shoes optional" playing surface. At least not during the daytime.

Little Guy

I forgot to mention this awesome little guy in earlier posts. It was given to me by my father-in-law when the field was first built. He sits in foul territory down then right field line. Something was missing out there, and he filled in just right. Sometimes he gives birds a bath, sometimes they take a dump on his head. Regardless of what the birds do to him, it makes me smile every time I look out there.

Evil lurks in right field

So this litte anomaly appeared in right field last week, and doesn't seem to be going away. I'm not sure what caused it, maybe fungus, bugs, intruding roots from a nearby tree, vandals...who knows? Whatever though, that's pretty spooky stuff.

For the "dugout".

A few days ago I found this awesome Gatorade cooler on craigslist for $40. It's in perfect condition. It has dividers inside that you can fill with water and freeze to keep the ice from melting so quickly. Makes the patio look even more like a dugout. Now I just need a bunch of sunflower seeds to spit on the ground and I'll be all set.

New Dirt

All that talk about preparation wasn't just BS. The fact is, while I paid a lot of attention to the grade and drainage of the grass areas, I neglected to pay as much attention to the infield. So afraid was I to let my rockin hybrid grass be improperly watered, I forgot all about what water can do to dirt. Moreover, what water can do to dirt that is formulated for a very specific purpose.

Anywho, the point is that because I failed so miserably in that department, I now have a few issues with erosion. There is a patch of dirt just beyond first base that has gotten washed away over time, revealing this nasty rocky earth beneath the luxurious infield dirt. Yes, I said luxurious. There's also a smaller spot just to the left of 2nd base. I've been throwing a little of the excess infield mix I had on top of them as a sort of lame patch job.

It finally got to the point where something had to give, and I decided to just go ahead and brave the heat and really fix it. First though, I needed some new dirt. I took the boys on a little trip down to Stabilizer Solutions. What a cool place. They have every kind of baseball dirt you could want. Just high quality dirt everywhere you look. A little boys dream. I chose to go with a product the call "Hilltopper". It's a ready-to-play polymer coated soil that is just awesome. I got four 50lb bags at a price so low I'm not sure they want me putting it out there. This is the stuff you see on every MLB park around the warning tracks and behind home plate. It doesn't need water, but when it gets it, drains like nobody's business. Plus it binds really well with other soils. Perfect for what I need.

Now for the fix. What I did was rake the infield out really well to start. Then I poured the hilltopper onto the areas I needed it most, then a bunch around the home plate area. I then mixed it in with the existing dirt really well. After that, I drug the field about 10 times at least. Making sure to check the slope of the problem areas. Then I wet the field down to see if the fix worked. Apparently it did. No mored nasty erosion lines. Plus the darker shade of red makes it look nicer. Well worth the little bit of money and whole lotta sweat it took to fix it right.

Semi-Complete

This was taken a little while after I got it "done". I don't think it will ever be all the way finished. I need a net along the outfield walls to keep balls from flying out so much. That will mean only the most majestic of long balls will actually get out. I also need to get a real light pole installed for true night-time baseball. Of course, those two things are pending, *bleccch*, HOA approval. We'll see. Anyway...that's ends the "How it was built" portion of the blog.

Now on to the real juicy stuff...field maintenance. Woo Hoo!

The Jerseys

Once I did the hit-it-here, it wasn't long before the jersey idea popped into my head. I knew I wanted jerseys, but I wasn't sure what to paint on them. I considered all my favorite players, but narrowing it down to four was a little hard. Then I thought about going with my parents and my in laws last names and birthdays. Which, would be cool...until I though about how much cooler the boys would think it was to have their own names and birthdays on the wall. So that won out. We took them to Lowe's and let them pick the color for the name and number. They liked that a lot and took their time picking them out. For my wife's jersey, I mixed a little red with a lot of white and got the perfect shade of pink. I used the green from the scoreboard for mine.

As for the actual painting itself, it was kind of hit and miss. I though about making a huge stencil for the jerseys, but ended up just doing them all freehand. I used a thick brush to get the basic shapes outlined, then used a roller to fill them in. The numbers and letters are all freehand as well. If I would have taken more time....

Anyway, it turned out good enough to put a smile on the boy's faces to it was good enough for me.

Hit it Here

I forgot my chronology a little bit. Before the jerseys came the hit-it-here bulls eye. I always loved these type signs. You see them in a lot of minor league parks. Sometimes you win a steak, sometimes cash, but here you win $0.25. Heck...it's only about 55 feet from home plate. Seeing as how I am the sponsor of this sign, I couldn't very well throw a steak of or big load of cash to every batter who finds the target. However, I'm thinking of painting the name of each person that's hit it as a little added bonus. As of right now, only one person has found it yet...and he was my 7 year old nephew. Guess I could have upped the reward a bit.

Anyway, about the process. I made a stencil from poster board. I sketched out the design, then cut it out with an xacto knife. I then taped it up to the wall with painters tape. I used more of the flat white and red that I used before applied with a small foam brush. The letters and numbers are 2" stencils I found at Lowe's. This little ditty took longer to paint than you would think. Even with using the stencil, it took forever to get the circles to look right. It was worth it though. It really sets off the next thing I did, yep you guessed it....the jerseys.

The Wall

You can't have a ballpark without a scoreboard, foul lines, distance numbers, etc. So, the first thing I did was get the lines and the numbers up. I used a basic flat white exterior latex paint for the numbers and for the scoreboard. For the lines I used a color called Blazing Star Yellow also in exterior acrylic but in a satin finish. The scoreboard background was done in Garden Gnome Green in exterior acrylic satin as well.

I found used 4" stencils for the numbers and letters. I painted them using cheap foam brushes you can get anywhere, and a roller brush for the scoreboard. I used painter's tape to make the lines as straight as possible. It took maybe 3 or 4 coats of paint to get it just right. The scoreboard took the longest, but it was the most fun to do. I based it loosely on Fenway's Green Monster scoreboard. I used acrylic latex Gloss Banner Red by Krylon for the strikes and outs "lights". For the ball "lights" I used acrylic latex Gloss Ivy Green by Krylon. When light hits those colors just right, they appear to shine almost like real lights, pretty cool.

Next up...the jerseys.

The Bags

This part was a lot of fun, and not much work. The hardest part was making sure the bases all lined up exactly where they were supposed to. Getting them 20 feet apart is easy, getting them 20 feet apart and lined up square with each other is the hard part. I could have done a better job if I'd have used twine and stakes to line things up a bit more, but it didn't come out too bad. I measured the distances out before I got started building the field, and staked it with some marker flags. I measured it again before I started installing the bases.

The bases I got from Baseball Express are the Champro Pro model bases. I could have gotten the MLB bases, but for an extra $80 you don't get anything that much better, except that you can brag that they are the best. Anyway, the bases come with an anchor you put in the ground that the bases fit into easily. I used a bulb drill that attaches to any power drill to make the holes for the anchors. I still had to pound them with a hammer to get them to sink all the way in. I could have just pounded them into the ground without the drill and then used a clean out tool to get all the dirt out, but I went the easy route. I still had to use the clean out tool to get a little of the dirt out, but it wasn't much.

Once I had the anchors in, I measured again and then put the bases down. Everything lined up great, the anchors held, and we were ready to play.

Next up...paint the fence Daniel-san

Gettin' Dirty

Ohhh boy. This was the part I looked forward to the most. A good infield surface is a thing of beauty. Smooth and firm, but with enough give to allow good traction. The company I chose to use, Stabilizer Solutions, really knows their stuff. They supply dirt to just about every field in this state, from professionals down to elementary schools. They have a few different varieties to choose from but I went with what the pros use. Their proprietary Ballyard Mix. It's a great all around infield mix and requires very little maintenance...plus it's pretty cheap for what you get. It was $40 a ton delivered and I got 3 tons.

It comes to you in a very dry, fine, almost powdery texture. However, once you tamp it or roll it down and water it...it's ready to play on right away. It took me a while to get it all on the field, only because I did it myself using a wheel barrow and a shovel. Fun. I ended up using all except about a hundred pounds of it. After dragging it out for about an hour or so, I wet it down thoroughly as instructed. I then rolled it out, and watered it again.

As soon as I was satisfied that it was level and compacted enough, I called it a day. Sitting back looking at the almost-ready-to-play field was very gratifying. It was hard work, but well worth it.

Next up...bases loaded

Choosing and installing

After I had the soil ready, I had to choose and choose wisely. Now, I don't think I could have made a seriously bad choice with any of the varieties Western Sod had to choose from. They would have all grown well, and looked great. However, for me, it came down to three factors;

1) Durability
2) Drought Tolerance
3) Easy maintenance

I was torn between BOBsod, which they use in a lot of baseball stadiums, and Tifway419. The BOBsod has all the characteristics I was looking for, but the Tifway is a little more durable and easy to maintain. Remember, my field is going to get a lot play time from my two little guys, and they can be rough on grass. Tifway recovers so well, they can't really hurt it for long.

The other factor I had to consider, although not so much, was my mower. I have an excellent mower, but it's rotary mower. Most experts recommend a reel mower for hybrid bermuda. The reason being you get a more even cut and you don't have to constantly sharpen the blades. For now, I'm sticking with the rotary but a reel is in my sights for the future.

Back to the sod.

I went ahead and ordered the Tifway 419 for delivery. They dropped it off the next week as scheduled. Because it was early January, the sod was over-seeded with rye grass and looked great. It comes on wooden pallets and boy does it weigh a lot per roll. I'd guess 50lbs at least. The night we got it, there was a slight rain shower so that helped to keep it moist the next day. In fact it rained pretty much the whole time we installed it, but just enough to keep things a little damp, which was nice.

I had the help of my Dad and Father-in-Law for the installation. I highly recommend getting a few people to help out if you want to get the job done in a timely manner. Without their help, I would've been one hurtin' sonofagun. We got it all laid, according to the instructions on the Western Sod website. It took about 3 hours to get it all in and trimmed out how I wanted it. I used a drywall saw to cut the sod and it really worked wonders on the thick roots of the muddy turf.

As soon as the sod was laid, I cut a three foot circle freehand in the center of the infield for the pitchers mound. I made my first cut in the center, worked my out about 1.5 feet, then cut a circle around it. Though mine came out really well this way, I wouldn't recommend this technique. I got really lucky.

So, the last step was to roll the sod with the roller. This took me about an hour. No big deal to get it level since I had spent so much time taking care of that beforehand. There was one spot in the outfield that was very spongy so I did my best to avoid rolling over that, and just kind of patted it down by hand. After I was done rolling...it just looked great.

Then it was time for....the clay.

Getting it ready

The next step in the process was getting the soil ready for the sod. I spent hours looking at the Western Sod website learning all about soil. It's quite a wealth of information if you're into that kind of thing, which I am. Anywho, the main point they, and about a gozillion other sites, try and get across is preparation is the key to a good field. Seeing as the soil in the backyard is dry, rocky, nasty stuff, I wanted as good a base as I could get. Before I even ordered the sod, I got the field ready for it.

I ended up working out a formula of 20 bags of Scott's Turf starter, 10 bags of Steep Manure, 10 bags of Peat Moss, 3 bags of gypsum, and 10 bags of some generic lawn soil. I may have used more, but definitely not less than this.

I got it all home and began the process of working it into the soil. I alternated the different amendments as I mixed them in. I started out just raking them slowly into already tilled-up soil. I slowly added more and more until I had it thoroughly mixed into the infield and out field. I used the last two bags of peat moss to finish it off.

Then came the part I really enjoyed. Leveling. Getting a good level surface was one of the most important things to me. If you've ever played baseball on a bumpy baseball field, you understand. Being level is also good for reducing water run-off, but I was mostly concerned with playability.

The whole leveling process took about a week of trial and error. At first I used the back of a small rake to get a rough grade established. I soon moved to a large field rake and this proved to be the best tool I used. I was able to borrow a sod roller from my brother-in-law and this was the second best tool I used. I say second only because the dang thing was so heavy and cumbersome. But, even after your surface is level, that roller never lies. Once you tug, push or pull that thing over your dirt, you know exactly where your high and low spots are. I spent a lot of time raking, rolling, raking and rolling, cussing, raking, rolling. But it was all worth it. The outfield is pretty level, with a few spots I could have done better at. The infield however is pancake flat. For whatever reason, it turned out much better than the outfield which is a very good thing. A bad hop in the infield can ruin your day real, real quick.

Next up....sod, sod everywhere.

Noe to the rescue

My next attempt at hiring a landscape guy was a huge success. His name, Noe. Yes, Noe. Not only did he come out and give me a thorough estimate, but he got the work done when he said it was going to be done. It might have been because he was totally into the idea of helping me build the field, but nonetheless he worked like a madman. Plus he charged me way less than I thought he would.

He took out all the rest of the rocks. Took the trees out roots and all. Removed the bougainvillea. Removed the patch of grass. Installed an all new sprinkler system including 4 new valves. And tilled the dirt for me. All for about $1200. That guy is the man.

If he wouldn't have come through like he did, I would've abandoned Craigslist forever and hired some freak out of the phone book most likely. I'm not saying it's for everybody, but for me it worked like a charm.

Playing off that good fortune, I found a great company to put in the curbing for the field. They charged $1.85 per foot and put in 100 feet of curbing from left field down around home and out to right field. Truly a bargain, plus it looks great and helps keep rocks off the field. Nice.

Next step....soil amendments. Ohhhhh. Aaaaaah.

First attempt

So, as I said before, I used Craigslist to find the help I needed to get it started. I put an ad on there that basically said I needed a LOT of demolition done to my backyard. I wanted it all chopped down, scooped up, scraped away, and hauled off. I got a number of responses pretty quickly. One guy gave me a really good price and he could start before Christmas so he got the first shot.

The first day he showed up to work, he had 3 guys with him. I walked him through what I wanted done. I used marker paint to outline the borders. He then told the workers what to do, dropped them off and took off. He would come back every few hours to pick up a load of rocks, dirt, and whatever and be gone for another 2 hours. It wasn't until after lunch that I realized they had nothing to drink or eat. I walked out and asked them if their boss, I'll call him Bob, had gone to get them food and water. They told me he had bought them all a Gatorade and bag of sunflower seeds for the day. THE DAY.

At that point I was pretty pissed at Bob. But it was about to get worse.

I went and got the guys a few gallons of water, some more Gatorade, and some food. While they took a little break, we got to talking. One of them, "Sam", noticed my LSU cap and asked if I was from Louisiana. I told him I was and that got the ball rolling. Turns out Sam was from New Orleans and had lost his home in Katrina. He told me he got a new start from a local church program that provided him food and shelter in exchange for doing charity work and spreading the gospel. Bob apparently heard of the program and decided to turn a profit by exploiting it.

Sam told me Bob came to the program looking for three or four men to help him do a job. He would in turn donate a large portion of the money to the program. Awesome right? Except Bob had no intention of donating anything to anybody. So, I paid them all $40 and said if Bob brought them back the next day, I would do the same.

When I saw Bob later that day, he even asked for more money because he'd "bitten off more than he could chew" with this job. I told him I understood but if I agreed to give him more money, he better get the job done on-time, which was in one week. He said he would, so I bit my tongue about the other stuff and let him stand by his word.

Well, a week came and went and Bob was showing up at random times...always by himself. He'd do a little work, take off and that would be it. Two weeks later, he finally threw in the towel and stopped coming all together. When I called him, he said he thought he was done. OK. I chalked it all up to learning experience. For the amount of work he did, I actually got a good deal, so I wasn't going to fight it. I would just have to find someone to finish the job that ol' Bob started.

Basics

So, after I looked past what it was, I saw what it could be. When I measured it out I realized I had a perfect 50x50 square to work with. 2500 s.f. of possibilities. I remember looking at a piece of paper that I had made some rough sketches on. I had one of those "what-if" moments.

Hmmm...a baseball field? A baseball field. Can I ? Should I even ask? Aww well, lets just see if it's possible first.

I went in, got on the Internet and started searching. Surprisingly, I am the only person I can find that has done just this thing. I was looking for somebody to walk me through the steps, but there is just nothing out there. So, I started playing with numbers. I got the dimensions of an official little league field. Waaayyy too big for my space, so I just shrunk it down. Instead of 60' base paths I tried 20'.

I jotted down the numbers and went outside to make some measurements. It worked perfectly. I could make it fit, while at the same time not being too small to be practical. If I had gone any bigger with my dimensions there wouldn't be enough outfield space to make a real game possible. So, hey what do know...I got it right the first time!

So, now that I knew that it was "possible", I had to get permission to start making it happen. To my great surprise, my wife was just about more enthusiastic than I was. She never liked the backyard anyway, and we had already agrees on tearing out and just putting grass back there. This idea just seemed to click with both of us.

It doesn't happen often that we agree with each other this much...but it is magic when we do.

Where it all started...

When we first bought the house, it came with all this beautiful landscaping...no extra charge! The bermuda was in terrible shape. There were rocks everywhere. A dead palm tree. A pitiful little ficus. Bougainvillea randomly placed along the walls. For some reason they put 6 random power outlets all over the yard. The centerpiece of the yard was some silly, swampy water feature/planter that literally saved us at least 5K on the purchase price of the home.

Well, all that goodness was short lived. A few months later, I used the magic of craigslist, and got a few guys working on the stuff I couldn't do myself. I'll detail the rest in a bit...but for now, enjoy what it once was.

First things first.

This is just going to be strictly about the field itself. I will drone on about all things field-maintenance related. Things I need to do. Things I want to do. Things I should have done but now must rectify... .

I'm going to try to make this as boring as possible except to the most discerning of field nerds like myself. That way, I can look back and see where I went wrong, and where I went right, and all the places in between.

Enjoy...if you're into this kind of thing.