I live directly across the street from the U Albany baseball field. My observation is that U Albany has not once dragged the field, for any of the games for the 3 different divisions that play there. The league pays for use of that field, and you would think there grounds people could spend 15 minutes dragging it,and making a decent playing surface. I've seen a player get hit in the side of the face with a two hopper, in an area of the infield where a rough playing surface is obvious. Plus, you can see how many bad hops do occur due to the rough surface. Is it too much to ask U Albany if they could drag it once every few weeks at least???
I agree with you entirely. once the ball hit the ground anywhere beyond the infield grass an infielder could be sure of only one thing, the hop would not be true. We issued combat pay to our shortstop, I'm not sure if the White Sox did the same.
We should definitely bring that up, next time we negotiate with them, but to have any leverage, we need to find alternate fields to replace it. I agree that we grossly overpay for this field, but this year it didn't sound like we gave Tommy any viable alternatives.
The 35 A's have a game there on Wednesday against the Braves. Is there any way to contact SUNY to have a maintenance guy there at 5:00PM to open the big garage and get a tractor out to help on the field? I know there is a guy on duty - I've seen him parking by the garage at that time.
We will have enough guys there to quickly rake it. It has to be more than just a "dragging", however - it needs to be dug into and loosened. Dragging would be like buffing it. Please call me if this can happen.
We desperately need to find alternative fields and dump UAlbany like a bad habit. The field SUCKS. Even if they were to bother to rake/tamp/drag the field from time-to-time, that still will not cure the monumental drainage problems that field has.
