Discarded dirt makes for field of dreams
Nov. 1 , 2006
By JOSEPH M. DELEON News-Post Staff
jdeleon@fredericknewspost.com
FREDERICK — When Alpine Services Inc. had to dispose of more than 200 tons of clay and sand dug up during renovations at Harry Grove Stadium last month, Wayne Brown was in the right place at the right time.
Mr. Brown, 40, is a coach with the Frederick Rangers, a youth travel league of 12- to 17-year-old baseball players. He's also vice president of Silver Spring-based construction company ACG where he's worked for more than 15 years.
While working on an ongoing landscaping project with Alpine in Washington, Mr. Brown learned the clay-sand blend, used as the running surface in baseball infields, was available.
Now, children in Frederick and Brunswick catch fly balls and slide to home plate on what could have wound up as filler in top soil.
“The main thing is having fun,” Mr. Brown said Tuesday. “They also grow as a player and as a young man — you learn a lot of life's lessons when you're on the field.”
The Frederick Ranger program has been around for more than 10 years. Mr. Brown joined about a year ago after coaching Little League ball for more than six years.
Improvements unfold
Mr. Brown, a former catcher for West Virginia University, has elevated the sport in Frederick by spending his time and money improving the local field and equipment.
While players pay $100 annual membership fee, Mr. Brown has spent more than $5,000 of his own money for a batting cage, uniforms, umpires and portable toilets.
The latest improvement is a portable outfield fence. Posts slide into sleeves in the ground that hold the fabric wall in place. It takes about 10 minutes to set up or take down the fence.
Mr. Brown couldn't install a permanent fence because the field belongs to the county.
“There's a lot of hidden costs that, on the outside looking in, you might not think of,” Mr. Brown said. “It's all out of pocket, but I'd spend $20,000 if I could — kids are only kids once; there's no price you can pay to replace that.”
Another hidden cost is the time it takes to coach a baseball team. Mr. Brown spends about 15 hours a week during peak season at practices.
It takes a lot of muscle to move 100 tons of sand and clay.
Mr. Brown struck a deal with Keith Tucker from the Brunswick Railroaders, a Little League team: help spread the soil in exchange for half of the ball diamond mix.
The sand and clay mixture helps the field drain so games can go on sooner after rain. It also makes for a smoother, safer playing surface.
On dirt fields, players might trip on rocks and balls that skim the surface can catch a rut, potentially slamming the ball into a player's face.
“You can make a field out of anything, but then you have to worry about rocks and bad hops,” Mr. Brown said. “It's really nice now — you don't see too may baseball fields with this smooth of a surface.”
He wouldn't have been able to do it without Laura Guthrie's approval. The Spring Ridge Elementary School principal shares the school's baseball field with the Rangers.
The relationship started more than five years ago when a team representative asked Ms. Guthrie for permission to make improvements to the field.
“The more improvements they made, the more we appreciated it — with an unlevel place in the field you can get a twisted ankle,” she said Tuesday. “We usually don't use it, except for field day once a year.”
The event celebrates the end of the school year with physical fun, such as relay races and water balloon tosses. While Ms. Guthrie expected the improvements, she has been impressed with the topof-the-line equipment Mr. Brown has brought to the field.
“They have a very fine field and I know it feels good to them to have an excellent facility,” Ms. Guthrie said. “For me it's a safety issue and for my students it's a safer area for them to play.”
Diamond economics
Sally Ziegler with Alpine first offered the leftover soil to Frederick city officials, but they declined, she said. She believed Mr. Brown wouldn't turn it down.
“I knew Wayne was heavily involved in baseball and personally looking to develop his own baseball field,” she said Tuesday. “We could have been able to get rid of it by mixing it with top soil, but this was good stuff.”
It would have cost more than $8,000 to buy 196 tons of ball diamond mix and 4 tons of calcined clay — the proportion Ms. Ziegler estimated for the sand and clay blend.
Ball diamond mix costs about $35 per ton, while calcined clay goes for more than $300 per ton.
“It feels good to make these donations, we knew it would go for a good cause,” Ms. Ziegler said. “I don't think most of those teams can afford it — they probably just go for a little bit of ball diamond mix on top.”
Alpine even paid $600 to have the soil trucked to Spring Ridge Field.
The best part is helping people like Mr. Brown put together a quality field, Ms. Ziegler said. Her daughters, who are now 18 and 20 years old, played soccer on dusty, weed-choked fields.
“I don't even think the parents on the teams know that there is always someone like these guys spearheading these projects to make fields available for the kids,” she said. “My kids used to play all kinds of sports, but nobody took care of these fields — Wayne really gives back to the community.”