Keeping Big A in Playing Shape Is No Easy Job : Bill Hall and Crew Convert Stadium From Football to Baseball Use and Back

Bill Hall must be the envy of all Rams fans. After most Rams home games in Anaheim Stadium, he gets to tear down the goal posts.

Hall doesn’t get arrested for doing that, either. In fact, he gets paid to do it.

Being the Stadium Facility Coordinator, Hall is not only responsible for general maintenance of Anaheim Stadium, but he also oversees the crew that converts the stadium from football use for the Rams to baseball use for the Angels.

In this case, that would be overnight. Literally.

And it’s not quite as easy as it sounds because it involves much more than just tearing down the goal posts. From the time that Thursday night’s football game ended until about 3 p.m. today, Hall’s crew is busy making the changeover so that the stadium will be baseball-ready again.

So what would happen if the stadium isn’t ready for baseball when the Angels and Oakland A’s take the field for early batting practice this afternoon?

“I’d be in a soup,” Hall admitted. “But most of our problems depend on the size of the crowd. The bigger the crowd, the more there is to clean up.”

By now, Hall’s crew is experienced in making the changeover, although unexpected problems can arise, such as one of their fleet of mobile scrubbers or sweepers breaks down.

Under the direction of field supervisor Bruce Freestone, a crew of 150-175 clean the stadium, parking lot, and surrounding neighborhoods of garbage, glass and litter.

Indoors, they clean all of the locker rooms, restrooms, football and baseball press boxes, concourses and concession areas.

“If there aren’t any breakdowns or stoppages of equipment, the cleanup is usually done by about 8:30 in the morning,” Hall said.

For a sellout crowd such as a baseball playoff game or a regular-season Rams game, the cleanup crew may number as high as 350. The entire procedure for switching over from football to baseball use costs between $8,000-$9,000 each time, according to Hall.

Converting the facility to baseball use overnight follows a set procedure as outlined by Hall:

--General stadium cleanup as described above, including sweeping and hosing down most of the facility.

--Removing the goal posts.

--Retract the mobile grandstand off of the playing field and cover the tracks that the grandstand rolls on with dirt and sod. This procedure generally takes two hours.

--Take the pitching mound cover off and raise the mound, which includes the pitching rubber, up to the major-league required 10 inches. “It’s a water hydraulic system,” Hall said. “Once its raised, all you have to do is lock it in place and measure (the height) to make sure it’s up to standards.”

--Re-erect the foul poles. “We have a crane to do that,” Hall said. “That usually takes a good two hours if nothing goes wrong.”

--Install the “batter’s eye.” That’s the green canvas cover in center field that serves as a background for batters so that they can follow the ball from the pitcher’s hand to the plate clearly.

--Install the backstop screen, the one that protects fans behind home plate from sharp foul balls.

--Install the foul ball net, which connects from the foot of the baseball press box down to the backstop screen.

--Remove 475 seats from the club level. These seats are used in the football configuration only.

--The regular groundskeepers then wash out the lines and numbers of the football field and put down the first and third base foul lines as well as the batters and coaches boxes.

White and colored gypsum is used for the yard lines and end zones and white gypsum only for the foul lines of the baseball configuration. Unlike many high school football fields, the yard lines at Anaheim Stadium don’t weave because the groundskeepers follow string guides and stencils.

--Dress the diamond, including dragging the infield, cutting and vacuuming the grass, repairing any divots in the field, and smoothing the batters box and pitcher’s mound. Also includes installing the bases and home plate.

Any grounds crew’s greatest nightmare is rain. Thanks to the local climate, a muddy field is something that Hall rarely has to contend with, although it did rain consistently through last December’s inaugural Freedom Bowl.

“Rain gives us considerable worry,” Hall said. “But it hasn’t been a major problem. We’ve done it so many times now that we know most of the tricks of the trade when converting. You just have to make different adjustments for different events.”

Anaheim Stadium, remember, is used for other events besides just professional football and baseball. The Rev. Billy Graham recently held a crusade there, a Super-Motocross and Truck-Tractor Pull is scheduled for January and there are usually several rock concerts per year, all of which have different maintenance needs.

Hall is hardly nonplussed when facing the various problems that come up in his line of work, in part because of his experiences in the military. After all, when you’ve served in the Marines for 27 years, participated in the Inchon invasion in the Korean War and spent 24 months as a platoon leader in Vietnam as Hall has, something like a broken sweeper doesn’t phase you too much.

Following his retirement from the military, Hall, 56, applied for work at the City of Anaheim and eventually transferred from maintenance to security at both the stadium and the Anaheim Convention Center.

Since 1979, Hall has been Stadium Facility Coordinator and is one man who clearly enjoys his work. The condition of the field for tonight’s baseball game at Anaheim Stadium will likely reflect just that.