INDIANAPOLIS - The work to get Victory Field's pristine playing surface ready for a new year begins right after the final home game of the last season.
"Put the field to bed the way we want it to wake up in the spring," said Indians' Director of Field Operations Joey Stevenson. "Our mounds are rebuilt, our infield's regraded, there's green grass everywhere, so we know when we reopen in the spring it's going to open up that way and then all we have to do these first couple of weeks of the spring is just touch things up."
Stevenson is entering his 18th season with the team after studying turf science in Purdue's agronomy department.
"When you go out at night at Purdue and you tell people, hey, you're a turf science major, they look at you awfully funny, because they think it's kind of not real," Stevenson joked.
But turf science is very real. Stevenson relied on what he learned in West Lafayette and Mother Nature to deal with this winter's cold snaps.
"We came in one day, it was kind of green and then two days later it was yellow, so people upstairs in the front office were asking what happened, but for us that's just normal," Stevenson said. "Thankfully, about a week ago we got some really good weather and it really kind of sparked and got it growing."
The Victory Field turf is Kentucky bluegrass.
"It's like the Cadillac of lawns, like I would never put Kentucky Bluegrass on my home lawn, because it needs water. It needs fertilizer. It needs some fungicide application," said Stevenson. "It's like a high-maintenance grass."
The turf isn't the only thing that can be high-maintenance. Players can be too about the length of the grass, the infield dirt and the feel of the mound.
"They're all a little picky and it's kind of annoying," Stevenson said laughing.
The annoyance is worth it for Stevenson and his crew when they step back on game day and look at what they created.
"It's weird," said Stevenson. "You have a feeling like no one here really knows what we did to get it ready and that's kind of the beauty of it is we don't want them to know. We just want them to show up, have a hot dog, a beer and just enjoy the game."