Jesse Sandoval

The grass at Arrowhead Credit Union Park, home to the Inland Empire 66ers baseball team, is a lush, cool green. The white lines are perfectly straight and, somehow, beautiful. The outfield is mowed into a smooth checkerboard design. The artist is Jesse Sandoval, 45, and this field is his canvas.

Philosophy: “I protect this field. It’s like my baby, my child. That’s the way I treat it. When people abuse it or do something to it, it’s like somebody beating my kid.”

Greatest reward: “Admiring the field after getting everything set up, just admiring how everything is marked, cut.... You always try to do a feature that people remember. Mine starts out as a circle, then takes straight out in different directions.”

Confession: “Once it rained, and I didn’t listen to the weather report, and we covered it but we didn’t cover it in time. We left the cover on too long, where the water just stood there. It was an overcast day, no wind, and it didn’t dry so we had to cancel the game. I put the newspaper story on my bulletin board saying how the game was rained out with 0.17 [of an inch] rainfall. From that day on, there have been no rainouts.”

-- Duane Noriyuki