Dirty Awful Fun

Yesterday while killing time I drove past Catamaran Park in Foster City, a park near the house where I spent most of my younger years. The city apparently has spent a great deal of effort turning the entire grass field in artificial turf, and boy does it look nice. I'm seeing this in a lot of parks these days (Danville has a field I umpire at occasionally where base hits turn into Triples routinely) and the suburbs soon will see entire generations grow up playing on artificial turf in areas where the weather is perfect for grass.

I'm not sure if this is good or not. I'm not going to soapbox and here and claim that I'm old and sign of the times blah blah good ol days--but I am going to say that the first time I played on turf I was dumbfounded. After being stomped by Burlingame's football team my freshman year of High School, I got back to the locker room and attempted to stamp the mud out of my cleats only to find they had been scraped clean. Now, when I was a kid I had a new pair of Baseball pants every two weeks because I would slide so much I would tear myself a new...you get the picture. I think I wasn't alone in being a kid that liked getting dirty.

What is the impetus for turf? Is it easier to maintain? You don't have to mow it, or re-paint lines on it for sporting events, or worry about gophers and other such pesky critters, but is that such a big deal? We're eventually cutting jobs in our community I would assume, and furthermore we're taking away a little bit of what ties us to the planet. Now I'll be the first to admit that getting stung by a bee is no fun at all, but is it worth (what I assume) is a multi-million dollar turf project?

Sports play differently on turf--the balls roll quicker and longer, changing the game a bit. You often times have to buy a second set of shoes to play on turf in order to maximize your game; using regular spikes isn't as effective as "turf shoes." I feel like this movement may just be an "Emperor's New Clothes" movement. As in, everybody else in the suburbs is doing it, so we need to do it or else folks won't think we're as postmodern as the rest of the world. Heaven forbid your child comes home completely disgusting from mud football, complete with an ensuing cold and a giant grin on his face that can only come from dirty, awful fun.