Groundskeepers use parks as canvases By Mel Antonen, USA TODAY By David Mellor David Mellor designed this pattern on the Fenway Park grass to commemorate the Red Sox's centennial season. Pittsburgh Pirates head groundskeeper Luke Yoder doesn't think of himself as an artist, but what creative person wouldn't like to have his audience? The Vortex, a work designed by Yoder and his staff during their minor league days, isn't in a gallery, but their swirls of light and dark green grass are on display through Thursday at PNC Ballpark. And Yoder, 29, who hasn't taken an art class since high school, is feeling like he's the mowing version of Rembrandt. "We're definitely pumped," Yoder says. "I haven't seen anything like this pattern in the big leagues. ... The best way to describe it? It looks like the (basketball) uniforms of the Portland Trail Blazers." In an era when baseball parks are taking an old-fashioned look, the grass is becoming hip. Major league fields have come in checkerboards for years, but these days the trend is for something original, if not funky. "Infield grass is the perfect canvas, and patterns are only limited by your imagination," says David Mellor, groundskeeper for the Boston Red Sox. He mowed the team logo in the infield, and a bat and two baseballs forming the number "100" into the outfield at Fenway Park in early June to celebrate the club's centennial. How to dress up the grass for the All-Star Game on July 10 at Seattle's Safeco Field is another topic of discussion: Should the grass be adorned with bunches of little stars or one big one? Some people like striping. Others say it isn't necessary. When Murray Cook, field consultant for Major League Baseball and the Olympics, had the Olympic rings mowed into the outfield grass at Sydney's baseball stadium last September, International Baseball Federation officials gasped. "They actually said, 'The balls are going to go in there and go around in circles,' " Cook says. "They didn't understand it was a illusion." How do the stripes get onto the field? Groundskeepers say it's simple: A roller  21 inches wide for the infield and 6 feet wide for the outfield  is attached behind a mower reel. It rolls over the grass so the color of the blades change tone when the sun hits at different angles. The grass is never cut to different heights nor is it colored. It's all in the bending. The process is referred to several ways: rolling, mowing or striping. Master painter Mellor, at Fenway, is the master. He has written a book, Picture Perfect (Ann Arbor Press), which offers instructions on mowing techniques for sports landscapes. Photos of his patterns have toured in art exhibits. Groundskeepers were blown away by his Red Sox logo and bat-and-ball design. "The way he cut it, it's the most unique thing I've ever seen," says Heather Nabozny, the Detroit Tigers' head groundskeeper. "I'm still trying to figure out how he did it." The intricate design is gone but is scheduled to return July 6 when Boston hosts Atlanta. Mellor used to work in Milwaukee, where he striped a No. 19 in the County Stadium infield to honor Hall of Famer Robin Yount's retirement. He's even used designs his daughters, 11-year-old Cacky and 7-year-old Tori, colored at home. Cook practices patterns on residential lawns and Little League and college fields. Another favorite practice spot is a spring training complex at Jupiter, Fla., with 13 fields. "You can erase a field pattern if you make a mistake by just mowing back over the grass," Cook says. "Think of it like an Etch-A-Sketch. When we try a pattern on youth fields, if we don't like how it looks from the stands, we can easily correct our mistakes." By David Mellor Mellor cut this swirling design into Milwaukee's County Stadium years ago. The important thing is to make sure the surface provides a true bounce, Colorado Rockies head groundskeeper Mark Razum says: "You can build up grains and a ball will snake," meaning the ball can take strange little turns in the grass. So Razum's crew rotates three patterns: checkerboards, diagonals and straight lines. On a six-game homestand, each gets used twice. Buck Showalter, former manager of the New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks and an ESPN commentator, still doesn't like the idea. He thinks baseball is going too far with grass design and says that while the fancy cuts are pretty, they are problem for players trying to field grounders. "Players are taking an uncomfortable charge toward the ball," Showalter says. "It's like they have to read the outfield grass like they do a golf green." But several Boston players say Mellor's unique design this season at Fenway didn't affect them. "We couldn't even see the designs unless we were in the stands," outfielder Trot Nixon says. "It wasn't a distraction at all." Grass billboards The roughly 9,000 square feet of grass on a major league field must be alluring to corporate sponsors. Would we ever see Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez, baseball's richest player, scoop a grounder at the tip of McDonald's arches? While advertising is showing up on basketball courts and football fields, Major League Baseball officials say advertising being mowed into an outfield isn't an option. "More and more, grass is becoming creative, but it is a long leap to say it is going commercial," says Sandy Alderson, MLB's executive vice president for baseball operations. "There hasn't been any suggestion for it, and I'm not advocating it." Teams would have to get permission, and Paul Beeston, MLB's chief operating officer, says it won't happen. "Right now, that's not an option." Of course, "right now" opens the loophole. A couple of decades ago, baseball opposed advertising on outfield fences. Now, home runs to left field at venerable Fenway Park zoom past soda bottles attached to light poles. And throughout the majors, outfielders can't chase a fly ball without running past a string of billboards. Baseball has shown some restraint regarding advertising on the field. In the 1990s, MLB was set to sell ads on players' uniforms. Newspaper columnists and fans were outraged, predicting baseball players would look like race-car drivers. Baseball dropped the idea. "Advertising in the outfield grass sounds repulsive, and I don't know if I could live with that," says Judy Fleming, a San Diego cosmetics salesperson who attends 20 Padres games a season. "If it pays the bills, you can see it coming, can't you?" says Paul Robertson, an auto mechanic in Mesa, Ariz., and a Diamondbacks fan. Stephen Greyser, a sports marketing professor at Harvard Business School, says fans initially would balk at sales messages in the sod. "It would mentally interfere with the pristine memory of what an infield or outfield is supposed to be," he says. But not for long. "I suspect, that over a modest period of time, fans will get used to it," he says. "Naming rights are now acceptable." At Roger Dean Stadium at Jupiter, spring training home of the Montreal Expos and St. Louis Cardinals, general manager Rob Rabnecker is thinking about including on-field advertisements in packages when he goes next winter to sell corporate sponsorships for 2002 spring training games. By David Mellor County Stadium is seen here with a plaid pattern. The stadium already has sold advertising for the foul poles. Why not the turf? Rabnecker says there are questions, but if he gets approval, he'll be selling the ballpark's infield and outfield grass. "We are always looking for new ideas, for interesting and innovative ways to show people's products," Rabnecker says. Yardwork Even as groundskeepers are one-upping each other on ballfields, homeowners are making fashion statements on their lawns. Steve Alioto, a Milwaukee Brewers fan who works for an air-conditioning company in Campbellsport, Wis., has his half-acre of lawn striped with diamonds of different sizes up to 5 feet long. It gives people different views from different angles. "It looks clean, neat and it is easy to see," he says. Lysa Schmitt, a school district secretary from Harleysville, Pa., has mowed a checkerboard into her yard, but she changes it often: "I like that it reminds me of golf courses or baseball fields." Artistic expression on wheels Pro groundskeepers say mowing in different directions is beneficial for the grass. It's also aesthetically pleasing and gives workers, who spend up to 18 hours a day at the ballpark when their team is at home, a creative outlet. It takes 2 hours a day to mow the grass at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium. The design changes daily. Steve Wightman, the head groundskeeper, lets his workers come up with ideas. He won't veto them "unless they come up with something too squirrelly." One of Wightman's favorites: a wavy pattern that made the ballpark feel "as if a Southern California wave was coming in." One design sent the wrong message. In Detroit, club officials ordered Nabozny to stop using a pattern of concentric circles emanating from the pitcher's mound. The reason: When the Tigers were in a long losing streak, ESPN announcers said the Tigers, like their field, were a bull's-eye for the rest of the American League. Want a field without stripes? Go to San Francisco's Pacific Bell Park. Giants owner Peter Magowan wants nothing but green grass. He says a striped field would be out of character for a ballpark that has an old-fashioned feel. "Our pattern is no pattern," head groundskeeper Scott MacVicar says. In Oakland, head groundskeeper Clay Wood used to alternate three or four patterns but has stayed true to one checkerboard pattern for the past couple of years. He likes it because the pattern looks different at various angles. "It is like a kaleidoscope," he says. He's not sure if he will change his stripes: "As long as nobody copies me, I'll probably keep it." Contributing: April Umminger, Jeff Goodman in Boston.