Swear at It or Swear by It: Artificial Turf Still Polarizes Sports

Hours before the 150th game of his 16th major-league season, each spent with the Kansas City Royals, George Brett dressed himself in that hypnotic way we all perform routine tasks--sanitary hose, stirrup socks, supporter, Lycra tights, T-shirt.

Last before the uniform came the most recent addition to his wardrobe, a black rubber knee brace, running from shin to mid-thigh on his right leg. He put it on like a tight sock, first rolling it up and then snapping it open, full length over his thrice-injured joint.

Brett sat up and pointed to the brace, which looked like a fire hose turned inside out.

“Artificial turf,” Brett said, damning the knee, the brace and the surface with two words.

Moments later, he walked onto the playing surface of Royals Stadium and dug his cleats into a 25-year-old tradition, a pale green carpet descended from the prototype invented by a corps of engineers who could never have dreamed what their creation would foster--what influence, what controversy, what money. The project was spawned in 1964 by a Ford Foundation survey that showed urban playgrounds were becoming scarce, and it was brought into a brilliant glare by the curious needs of Houston’s Astrodome. Soon afterward, all of sport was called onto the carpet.

As it turns into its second quarter century, artificial turf blankets 15 of 28 National Football League stadiums, 10 of 26 major-league ballparks and more than 300 assorted college stadiums, multi-use fields and neighborhood playgrounds--from the Toronto SkyDome to a dozen high schools in New York City--in North America alone. “I think you can pretty much say it’s here to stay,” Kansas City Chiefs defensive back Albert Lewis said.

But it scarcely remains a cool issue. When Judge Roy Hofheinz, then owner of the Houston Astros, found that grass would not spring green and lush from beneath the roof of what he proclaimed to be the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” a novel product, designed by the ChemStrand Division of Monsanto Industries and called ChemGrass, was installed, first in the infield and then, on July 9, 1966, over the entire surface. It was a curiosity then. “First infield I ever saw,” Mets catcher Jerry Grote said in that first summer, “that you could dribble a baseball on.”

And remarkably, it remains a curiosity today. What is known about artificial turf would fill a book; what is not known about it would fill a library. It exists as a smooth, green battleground on which athletes, management and manufacturers can wage war regarding its safety, its maintenance and its economics.

“I really don’t like the stuff at all,” offensive guard Sean Farrell of the New England Patriots said. “I just walk through a drill on it, in shorts, and I get fluid on my bad knee. I get burns and abrasions, and they go away . . . around the middle of January. I just happen to think that it hastens the end of a lot of careers.”

To which Ed Milner, president of AstroTurf Industries and the loudest and most persistent voice in support of his product, said, “They’re looking for an excuse, something to blame for the way their bodies feel, and we’re right there, convenient. But they don’t do anything about 20-game seasons and extra exhibition games.”

Science provides the undercurrent. For more than 20 years, surveys of athletes, tests of shock absorption, traction and injury frequency have been interpreted, misinterpreted and manipulated to fit partisan whims. “If you want artificial surfaces to look good, you can paint that picture,” said Dr. Martin Levy, an orthopedic surgeon from the Bronx. “If you want it to look bad, then you can paint that picture, too.” Accordingly, Levy has undertaken an ambitious study to evaluate the safety and usefulness of artificial turf.

Put bluntly, 25 years after the invention of artificial turf, he is returning to square one. There he will find the rest of the industry waiting for him, blithely spinning their wheels in the nap of the carpet.

In baseball, the issue is often less of safety than of subtleties, the manner in which artificial turf has altered the course of the game. Before artificial turf, there were no balls skipping over outfielders’ heads or careening wickedly to the fences. “You hit a blooper, you can take two (bases),” the Royals’ Willie Wilson said. “You hit a ball in the gap, you can take three.”

Ozzie Smith, the Cardinals’ perennial Gold Glove shortstop, said, “Everything’s fast, faster. Everything has to be based on quickness. You have to develop ways to get rid of the ball more quickly.”

But Whitey Herzog, often hailed for building “turf teams,” in Kansas City and St. Louis, denies that the surface has altered the sport. “You build your club to the dimensions of the ballpark, not the surface. If Fenway Park had artificial turf, I wouldn’t want a speed team. The key to having a good team on turf is that you have to have a real good throwing shortstop, because he needs to play deep and make a lot of throws from the hole.”

Artificial turf has been studied literally since it was created. Dr. James Garrick first outlined its contributions to injuries in 1967, and his work has been followed into the medical journals by more than a dozen other studies. The most significant--and the most polarized--were done by the Stanford Research Institute (for the NFL and the NFLPA) in 1974 (with a follow-up in ‘78) and by the National Athletic Injury-Illness Reporting System (NAIRS) in 1980.

The Stanford report in ’74 said, in part, “. . . Although it was noted that no overall injury differences were observed between natural and synthetic turf for injuries (those causing two or more missed games), the fact remains that significantly more minor injuries and playable injuries continue to occur on synthetic turf than on grass. Turf manufacturers have not yet developed a product that performs like natural turf. . . . “

Six years later, NAIRS concluded, in part, “. . . Artificial turf may feel or be harder than natural grass, but it does not even tend to be associated unduly with significant injuries reflecting hardness of surface.”

Well, there you go. Quite naturally, the NFLPA railed at the NAIRS study, which it claims never to have seen in its entirety. The NFL, on the other hand, leaned on it.

Researchers since have studied many of the same statistics used in both surveys and similar ones made by the NCAA and other groups. They remain polarized, their work subject to interpretation like the black and white of a Rorschach inkblot.