Cardinals Hope for Better Fate Through Chemistry

Los Angeles, last bastion of grass.

It is behind us now. We remember it fondly--green stuff that grows right out of the ground, in long, thin blades, right out of the dirt. You can hose it, cut it, rake it, slice it, dice it, chew it, have a picnic on it, maybe even have a major romance on it. Love affairs consummated on AstroTurf somehow lack the same charm.

For a hundred years, men have played baseball on grass. The game was designed for grass, with snowy white lime for sidelines and batter’s boxes. No one ever anticipated playing ball on a thick slab of rug. It is a notion that once would have been considered as nutty as playing nine innings on linoleum.

But here we are, in the big-league baseball playoffs, and what do we have? Four teams, four parks, but only one that has any use for a lawn mower. No organist plays, “Green, Green Grass of Home” in St. Louis, Kansas City or Toronto any more. Green, green floor of home is more like it.

It has been raining in St. Louis as the National League playoffs move to their new locale, but it is no big problem. The groundskeeper has a brand new vacuum cleaner and can suck up the water before it leaves a stain. The grass will get no longer. There will be a serious shortage of mud. Worms continue to be an endangered species here.

We are living in a Monsanto world, and there is not much we can do about it. Artificial turf lasts and lasts and lasts, as they say when they sell deodorants on TV. Before long, the Masters golf tournament will be played on an 18-hole carpet. The Lakers and Celtics will meet in the NBA finals on a large, rectangular pile of plush shag.

Dodger Stadium is the strange land of this season’s playoffs. Its surface seems foreign, as in some uncharted topography Leonard Nimoy might have pointed out to William Shatner as their spaceship hovered above it.

Years from now, scientists from other worlds will park their saucers at Dodger Stadium and explore it. “What do you call this place?” one will say, kneeling to scoop up a handful.

“Shortstop,” another will reply.

He will find weird and wonderful things like . . . well, like pebbles. Someone will recall the spot where a ball once took a funny hop and skipped right over Ozzie Smith’s mitt in Game 1 of the 1985 NL playoffs. “You mean it hopped 50 feet over his head, don’t you?” the inquiring little boy of the future will ask. By then, veteran AstroTurf watchers will have become accustomed to such bounces.

“No, my son,” the historian will say. “In olden days, baseballs could change direction just by touching a tiny rock. Sometimes they would slow up if the grass was long and wet. Sometimes they would speed up if the grass was cut nice and short.”

“How do you cut grass?” the kid will ask.

You see, whatever you understand is what you are accustomed to. The young men who come along these days have swatted baseballs with aluminum bats, have caught baseballs with enormous blue gloves and have swung at baseballs without having to take a position on the field. The national pastime’s past is like medieval history to them. Don Mattingly of the Yankees recently said that for much of his life, he thought Babe Ruth was a fictional character.

Terry Pendleton, third baseman of the Cardinals, broke into the majors last summer. Now he plays 81 home games a year on artificial turf. He also plays on it at Cincinnati, at Pittsburgh, at Philadelphia, at Montreal and at Houston. Had he been voted to the All-Star squad, he would have played on artificial turf in the midsummer classic at Minneapolis. Next year’s game is at the Astrodome.

And if he makes it to this year’s World Series, he will play every game of it on artificial turf.

Everything is so backward today that Pendleton was at a disadvantage in Dodger Stadium because he was playing on real, honest-to-God ground. When a guy hit a high chopper that hopped over his head, Pendleton was startled. He did not expect a ball to do such a thing on that strange stuff they have in the Los Angeles infield.

The place feels funny to him, even this late in the season, because real grass is the exception to guys like Pendleton, not the rule. “The coaches hit grounder after grounder at us before the first game, and we took a lot of ‘em on the arms and wrists and chest,” he said. “They beat us up pretty good.”

Ozzie Smith, too, mentioned that the Dodger Stadium infield was not the smoothest in the world, after a routine grounder did an imitation of a Mexican jumping bean for him in the playoff opener. Contrary to published reports, however, Smith went out of his way not to complain about the condition of the field.

“The field’s fine,” Smith said, repeatedly. “The Dodgers have to play on the same field we do. If they can catch it, we can catch it.”

But now, of course, the scene shifts. Now the Dodgers must play on the Cardinal carpet. This is the place where Willie McGee and Vince Coleman grounders go into center field instead of being flagged down behind second base. This is just like the place up the road in Kansas City, where Willie Wilson in his career has racked up 14 inside-the-park home runs.

This is baseball’s brave new world. You never see new ballyards named Something-Something “Park” any more. Or Something-Something “Field.” They are all Stadiums and Domes now.

The Dodgers ought to do something about that.

No, not install artificial turf.

Rename their Park.