How does the head of field operations for an MLB park keep that field so pristine? With drones, robo-mowers and old-fashioned expertise. Here’s the story.
Greg Elliott, the San Francisco Giants’ senior director of field operations, oversees the re-installation and maintenance of the playing field using high tech tools like drones and radar, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, in San Francisco, Calif. Greg Elliott is one of the very few horticultural wizards who require a pilot’s license to tend the grassy expanse he oversees.
“We really are the outliers in the league,” he says. “I feel like we’re doing our part to make this a preferred destination for ballplay, concerts and corporate events.” As it turned out, every time the park hosted Supercross and monster truck rallies, the landscape crew had brought in tons of dirt and sand to create the tracks for those vehicles, using highway construction rollers to pack down the surface. The rollers are capable of compaction down six feet, but the baseball playing surface at Oracle is only 14 inches.
To reduce compaction from heavy mowers, Elliott added lighter weight robotic mowers that can be programmed to cut at a specific height and in a specific direction. If you were to stick around long enough after a game, you might spot the little automatons roving the outfield, mowing to the programmed specifications. And to test the compaction, the crew uses special devices that send shock waves into the soil to measure thickness and other soil qualities.
The field also is maintained to suit the players and the game, Elliott says. When the grass is maintained slightly longer in the outfield, for example, it slows the roll of the ball. When catcher Buster Posey returned after suffering a broken leg, Elliott and his crew made the surface behind and around the plate a bit more forgiving, compacting the soil underneath to provide support, but covering the area in a softer blanket of clay.
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