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Maintain homeplate and batter'sbox
Maintaining
Your Baseball Field
HomePlate & Batter Box
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During
a baseball game, the batter's box and catcher's box
take a beating. It is also critical to maintain these
properly to reduce the potential for injury. |
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What
you're going to do The
home plate area used by the catcher and the batters takes a beating in
games and practice.
I think a lot of coaches in little league and PONY league never batted
or they wouldn't possibly expect their players to use such bad batter
boxes.
It is critical to maintain the batting stance area properly to reduce
the potential for injury. So, fix it. Maintain it.
How you
do this
- Rake the loose
material from the batter box and catcher box. This allows the hard ground
to be exposed.
- Lightly moisten
the exposed hard ground and the loose material to ensure the dirt will
bind when packed back in the holes. Let it set and absorb for few minutes
if you can.
- Rake the loose,
but moistened, material back in the holes.
- Tamp this loose
dirt into the ground. Use a tamp or the smooth back of a field rake.
- Rake down the
newly repaired areas as well as the rest of the homeplate area.
- Water the entire
area.
- Once the homeplate
area is completely prepared for the game, you can cover it with a tarp
to maintain a proper moisture level.
Tips &
Hints
- In some cases,
clay bricks are used to establish a firm
homeplate area. These moist clay bricks are a very acceptable
material because they have not been hardened by heat,
like bricks used in construction.
- Bags of powdered
mortar clay work also. Remove about 3 inches of dirt in the catcher
box and the batter boxes. Moisten the ground. Dump some powdered clay
in. Let it set a minute to absorb the water. Rake it around. Repeat
moistening, adding powdered clay, raking it in, until the level is almost
back to normal. Cover with the baseball dirt that was removed. Tamp
it in.
- Turface,
a calcined clay product, makes a great top dressing for the homeplate
area. A high school size mound requires 4 bags for adequate coverage.
The turface helps prevent slipping in damp weather and gives the area
a nice, professional, finishing touch.
Mistakes
to avoid
- Ignore homeplate
care. The biggest mistake. It seems to be common when a field is shared
by many teams and leagues.
- Not providing access
to the tools and hose to take care of this area.
- Just fill in the
foot holes with dry dirt. That doesn't help. Unless... your sprinklers
totally soak the dirt area at night for at least 20 minutes and then
you have hot, sunny weather the next day to bake and harden the dirt.
Otherwise, just filling the holes with dry dirt is worthless. Nobody
wants to use that. It disintegrates after a couple batters and does
not provide good footing.
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both batter
and catcher
need good footing
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