Blue Jays ready to get down and dirty

DUNEDIN, FL A .• When the Toronto Blue Jays play the Boston Red Sox on April 8 at Rogers Centre, history will be made.

Troy Tulowitzki is expected to take the field in the first inning and become the first Blue Jays shortstop to be stationed on dirt in a home game. After 26 years at their current home following 13 years at Exhibition Stadium, the Jays have replaced the three cut-out patches of dirt around the bases with all-dirt basepaths, as the rest of baseball uses.

“It’s not a grass field,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said, “but we’re getting closer.”

At different times in the 1970s and the 1980s, 13 stadiums used artificial turf with infields that had boxy patches at the bases ( often called sliding pits), along with a dirt pitching mound and a circular dirt area at home plate. The basepaths were white lines painted on the synthetic grass. The rest of the acreage was a plasticky green mat.

Those unattractive fields did not evoke the romantic image of baseball, and for some, they were a health hazard.

“I woke up one morning after two and a half years playing on that and said, What the hell is going on with my back and knees?” said Terry Pendleton, the Atlanta Braves coach who played seven seasons at third base for the Cardinals on the artificial grass in St. Louis’ Busch Stadium. “I say, get rid of it all.”

Pendleton blames the unforgiving surface for three knee operations. In 1989, he played all 162 games, only 42 of them on real grass.

His fellow Braves coach Kevin Seitzer played on Kansas City’s own speed carpet for five years with the Royals and says five knee operations were a result.

“I’d like to see all stadiums have grass,” Seitzer said, adding: “I’d like to see them all have the same surfaces and same dimensions to make it all uniform and equalize the game. I know that will never happen.”

But some level of uniformity is upon us. The Blue Jays spent the last several weeks jackhammering away a new infield into the Rogers Centre concrete. From now on, runners can circle the bases from home to home solely on dirt. Infielders may be able to spend an entire half- inning without touching a blade of artificial grass.

“The dirt is going to be a great addition,” Tulowitzki said. “Hopefully it plays good, but time will tell.”

The construction work has been extensive. Crews dug deep into the concrete and then poured layers of gravel, golf-course sand, clay and the final dirt to make the infield the same as at the 29 other parks. So, no more cutouts. But few harbour feelings of nostalgia.

“Not one bit,” said Jim Bowden, the former Cincinnati Reds general manager who presided over the team when it played on the green carpet at Riverfront Stadium.

Cincinnati’s turf arrived with the new stadium in 1970, four years after the Houston Astrodome became the first stadium to use artificial turf, out of necessity.

Grass did not grow properly under the roof. But soon, more than a dozen other buildings followed suit.

It was not just the domes in Houston, Seattle, Minnesota and Montreal, but also the open- air, multipurpose, circular behemoths that stood in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Even the baseball- only field i n Kansas City was plastic until 1995.

Candlestick Park in San Francisco had a variety of surfaces, but in 1979 it was ahead of its time when it became the first of the all-artificial fields to go back to real grass.

After Camden Yards opened in Baltimore in 1992, an unstoppable wave swept out the old plastic and concrete symmetry and ushered in the current era of boutique parks with odd angle sand luscious grass.

Eventually, it came down to two do med stadiums — Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, where frequent rain made a roof almost a necessity for the Rays, and Toronto, where cold weather did the same.

The changes in Toronto mean, of course, it will be more challenging for Blue Jays infielders to catch balls.

Artificial turf usually means an even bounce, and the Rogers Centre turf has been thick and soft in the last few years.

It is nothing like the older carpets on which balls would shoot through the infield, sometimes reaching the outfield walls.

“When it was wet, we used to say it was like marbles in a bathtub,” said Larry Bowa, who played shortstop for 12 years with the Philadelphia Phillies, most of them on the notoriously hard artificial turf of Veterans Stadium.

“You had to be alert. I remember one time Willie Stargell nearly killed me with a ground ball,” Bowa recalled.

The Blue Jays hope that within a few years they can convert to real grass. If the Rays get a new ballpark with grass as well, it will mean the end of artificial turf in baseball.

“If that happens,” Bowa said, “I don’t think anyone is going to miss it.”

WHEN (TURF) WAS WET, WE USED TO SAY IT WAS LIKE MARBLES IN A BATHTUB.