Baseball: The Grass Is Greener

Good news via the New York Times. For the first time since the Astrodome was built in 1966 (trivia question: who hit the first homerun in the Astrodome?), all National League teams will play their home games on natural grass. The last artificial turf park in the NL was Olympic Stadium in Montreal -- now, the only plastic fields left are in Minnesota, Tampa and Toronto.

AstroTurf (named after the Houston Astros and the Astrodome, where it was first installed) was hailed at the time of its inception as a suitable alternative to grass for indoor ballparks. Originally, the Astrodome had glass panels on its roof, which allowed light to shine in and the park to have natural grass. Unfortunately, the glass panels created incredible glare and made it all but impossible to catch flyballs. So, the panels were painted, but this killed the grass. Solution? AstroTurf. And the sports world was never the same.

Domed playing fields became the rage in baseball and football, and entire teams (i.e., the St. Louis Cardinals of the mid-80s) were built around AstroTurf. But unforgiving nature of the synthetic surface led to recurring injuries and player complaints. The completion of Camden Yards in 1992 began the movement to more "traditional" baseball parks, and with it, the movement back to natural grass. Hopefully it will not be too long before new venues replace the last three domes, so that baseball can forever be rid of this well-intentioned, but failed, experiment.

For more on ballparks (and a great procrastination tool), you can't beat the comprehensive Ballparks.com site.

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