Tustin’s Coach Is Cultivating His Obsession

Vince Brown stands, spoon in hand, on the edge of the infield and proudly surveys his masterpiece.

Brown, Tustin High School’s baseball coach, uses the spoon to smooth out the rough spots on the school’s new varsity diamond.

There aren’t many, though. Brown keeps the field--his pride and joy--immaculate. He spends at least 90 minutes a day, either before or after practice, raking and grooming it to perfection.

“Since I was 13, my hobby has been working on baseball fields,” said Brown, who is in his third season as Tustin coach. “It’s my form of relaxation. I don’t have the players work on it. I don’t have them rake. I figure I’m the one who can handle the rake. It’s sort of my fetish.”

Brown cut his Little League career short to work on the league’s field. He used to hang around Anaheim Stadium after Angel games to watch the grounds crew taking care of the field.

Last season, Brown decided Tustin’s old field wasn’t good enough, and he began plans to build a new one from scratch in a vacant corner of the school’s athletic area, just behind the existing diamond.

Work was started in September, and Brown was in his own little heaven.

The team raised money by selling advertising space on the outfield fence, getting enough to pay for the $16,000 backstop and the $32,000 infield.

Brown used crushed brick dust, which goes for $27 a ton, for the infield.

“They used to call it Angel dust because they had it at Anaheim Stadium,” Brown said. “But then they stopped because it came to mean something else (a slang term for the drug PCP).”

In order to keep the dust on the infield down, Brown had a unique sprinkler system installed.

Ron Drake, Mission Viejo coach, almost “fell over” when he saw it in action during a game at the Santa Ana tournament last week.

“We asked if they could water down the infield,” Drake said. “And all of a sudden the sprinklers start watering down the infield. I have not seen that before. Here (at Mission Viejo) we’re lugging a hose around.”

Tustin has a set of sprinklers that is designed strictly to dampen the infield. There is another traditional set that waters the outfield grass.

The school district picked up the tab for the sprinklers, but Brown said, with a smile, that he showed them how he wanted them installed.

The Tustin players spent a day putting down the sod for the infield. It was perhaps the most difficult task, Brown said, because the rolls of grass needed to be placed as close together as possible.

“You see some new fields, and there are gaps like this,” Brown said, holding his thumb and forefinger about two inches apart. “That makes the ball take funny bounces. You don’t want that.”

No, only the best for the aptly named Tiller baseball team and its visitors.

When other games, for youth leagues or high school tournaments, are played at Tustin, Brown sees to the maintenance.

“Between games, I go work on the field,” he said. “I don’t let anybody else work on the field.

“We had people here a week ago. Santa Ana Valley and Mission Viejo played (in the Santa Ana tournament). I was chalking the foul lines, and one of the players said, ‘Hey coach, this is a really nice field.’ That made me feel good.”

Brown follows a routine in keeping the field looking so good. He hand rakes around home plate, the mound and around the bases but drags the field, driving a little cart with what essentially is a big, flat rake trailing behind it.

He uses a hose to wet down the mound and home-plate areas, but relies on the sprinklers for the rest of the infield.

The players do perform some tasks. One is weeding.

“If they have a bad day, they weed,” he said.

Though Brown said there remains work to be done, his efforts have paid off in a well-maintained green-and-brick-colored ballfield.

Said Mission Viejo’s Drake: “I would say, all things considered, it’s probably the best field in Orange County.”