Metrodome Getting Softer Artificial Turf This Season

A crew has started to scrape the 5-year-old artificial turf from the floor of the Metrodome to make way for a $1.35 million replacement that the Metrodome director said is better for baseball and football.

“It’s coming off real nice and clean,” said Jerry Bell, executive director of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission.

An eight-man crew from Astroturf Industries Inc. of Dalton, Ga., began removing the Superturf last week. To the delight of Twins president Howard Fox, Vikings general manager Mike Lynn, and countless players and fans, it will be replaced with cushiony Astroturf 8.

Lynn called the old surface dangerous and Fox partially blamed it for the poor earned run average of his team’s pitchers. Other critics have included former Detroit Lions running back Billy Sims, who suffered a career-ending knee injury on it, Bell said.

“Our players complain it is too hard, therefore, affecting the bounce of the ball, and also affecting the speed of the ball,” Fox told the sports facilities commission in a letter last year.

In the letter, Fox said it was “absolutely imperative” the turf be replaced before the 1987 baseball season even though independent engineers said it could be used for another year.

Bell said the commission decided to replace it a year early because the schedule of Metrodome events in 1988 would not allow enough time for replacement.

But he said Astroturf 8 is a definite improvement over the Texas-made Superturf that cost $996,000. Tests last fall showed that a baseball dropped from nine feet to the Metrodome floor bounced an average of four feet, two feet higher than balls dropped on Astroturf 8.

Ronnie D. Zaicek, superintendent of field installations for Astroturf, said that both surfaces have a base five-eighths of an inch thick. But unlike the old turf, Astroturf 8 is rubber-based and more shock absorbent, he said.

Better yet, most of the new turf will not be glued to the asphalt Metrodome floor. Instead, it will be possible for stadium crews to roll it up in 15-foot sections to save it from the wear and tear of non-athletic events, such as rock concerts, Bell said.

He said the new turf should last seven or eight years. Astroturf 8 was chosen primarily because it has been used successfully in the Dallas Cowboys’ football-only stadium and the Kansas City Royals’ baseball-only stadium.

Lynn has said the new turf is “the state of the art in stadium surfaces.”

The sports facilities commission will pay cash for the new turf by tapping its repair and replacement fund. The commission asked the Vikings and Twins to pay for it, but both clubs refused.