Wants vs. Needs. We know when you’re deciding how to upgrade your baseball or softball facilities, there are a lot of things to consider. We also know it’s easy to accumulate a substantial wish list quickly. So distinguishing between your needs and your wants is crucial to make sure you can maximize your budget. Let’s explore several areas on and around the field where improvements can be made, along with important considerations to keep in mind during this process.
Netting will be an improvement both players and fans will appreciate. Removing those bulky and beat up chain-link backstops will give your field a big league feel and your fans will appreciate the improved sightlines offered by fewer poles and netting. The scuffing balls get when they are constantly fouled off a metal fence doesn’t happen with netting. Typically, you can get up to 30′ to 40′ in height for less money in netting than a 30′ to 40′ chain link system. We recommend incorporating some sort of knee wall so the netting doesn’t come straight to the ground. This will help with mitigating damage from maintenance equipment and little critters, which increases the longevity of your net. Those walls can be made of concrete or block, or it can be a modular wall system. Certain systems enable easy net removal for extreme weather conditions, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, or cold winters. Doing so will add extra life to your net. Switching to netting will be the most noticeable improvement you can make and it will affect the biggest number of people that will be visiting your field.
These are becoming more and more popular every day at the professional level. It is also becoming more popular at multiuse or multifield complexes. When determining your needs for barrier netting, you first need to decide what you are trying to protect. You could be protecting a nearby playground or parking lot, or you could just be protecting people that are too busy on their phones instead of watching their kids play! Either way, selecting the appropriate height will be very important to ensure that nothing bad happens. Like backstops, barrier nets give you good flexibility to go upwards of 40′ in height and let you span much further between pole to pole than chain link fences helping increase sightlines.
You can upgrade them by simply adding accessories. You can add a bat/helmet rack, new benches, or add padding and netting to the front of your dugout. Any of those items will dress your dugouts up and make them more usable for the players that are playing on your field. If you have it in the budget to do more, you will have a few more options to choose from. You can have your dugouts below field grade, or you can build them at field grade. Building your dugouts below field grade may limit your options with style of dugout you can choose from. If you don’t go that route, there are several dugout packages that will add a professional look to your field. With dugout packages, make sure you are paying attention to the structural forces that the dugouts are engineered to absorb. Dugouts can become expensive quickly, so having a clear plan and understanding your needs is crucial to stay within budget.
These can provide a nice practice/warm up facility all season long. You can customize your setup by stacking cages together side by side, or stack them end to end. There are attachments you can get to add additional hitting stations so you can make the most of your setup. With any batting cage, it is always recommended to hit and throw from a mat on top of your turf so you don’t add additional wear to these already high-traffic areas.
This can be a relatively inexpensive way to spruce up your fencing or dugouts. You can add logos or prints to display school spirit or town colors, or you can choose a plain design for added privacy and to shield against unwelcome wind. There are different types of windscreen materials to give you more privacy, durability to wind, and color/printing options. If measured and installed correctly, windscreen can give you that extra “wow” factor to really set your complex apart.
Clay is one of the biggest and best improvements you can make on your playing surface. Adding clay to your mound and plate will dramatically affect the quality of both of those areas. The majority of outs are recorded on the infield or at the plate, so making sure that those surfaces are up to snuff is important. Any dirt/clay improvement should be based on your maintenance capabilities. If you don’t have the staff to maintain clay on a daily or every other day basis, we wouldn’t recommend you add clay to the plate or the mound. Luckily, we have other options that will get you closer to the desired result of smaller holes. You can use rubber hitting mats in place of clay as an affordable option as well as being low maintenance. It is hard to hit when you are standing in a batter’s box and one foot is higher than the other. Same thing for the mound, it is very unsafe to have a crater in your landing spot and safety should be the first priority for every sports field manager.
Just as important as adding clay to the mound and the dish is choosing the right infield mix. The right infield mix will lighten your daily maintenance load significantly compared to maintaining an unbalanced mix. In my experience, I have had a lot of success with engineered soils in both the amendment process and a full 3″ – 4″ cap. Determining how much clay is in your mix is very important. If you do not have the time or labor to put out water multiple times a day, you should not be using a high clay content in your mix. If you do have the capability to water frequently, and have a tarp on hand, then you should use a mix with a higher clay content. Conversely, aim for a silt percentage that’s about half or equal to the amount of clay, maintaining a silt/clay ratio between 0.5 and 1.
By selecting a properly balanced infield mix, you will notice your mix stays in place and doesn’t migrate to different spots on your infield or to your grass. If you have a mix that stays in place and holds its grade, water will run off your infield in the proper direction which will allow you to get back on your field after rain quicker. It will also help you avoid lips on your edges, which can be extremely dangerous when you are trying to field a ground ball and the ball comes up towards your face instead of staying down like it should. Just like when you are determining to add clay, your maintenance capabilities should determine what you want to do with your infield mix. Adding infield irrigation can be a big-time saver and will dramatically affect your infield’s playability. Most irrigation companies will advise on using a high-speed head to avoid excessive puddling.
As with all improvements, these things do come at a cost. Some are more significant than others. If you don’t have the money readily available, don’t give up. There are multiple avenues to explore to get some help with these items. You can consider applying for grants, and you can solicit donations from people who have a vested interest in the field or community. You can also ask associations who use the field to conduct fundraisers which can be helpful as well. Getting buy-in from all parties involved is an important step in getting upgrades past the finish line.
Any of these upgrades can make a big difference on your ballfield. Don’t be afraid to reach out to companies who do these things for a living and ask questions about any of these topics that you don’t have experience with. As always, reaching out to your peers who may have had experience with improving their own fields can be beneficial. Ensuring we can provide safe facilities and fields will only help in making sure kids keep on playing youth sports so we all can continue to enjoy baseball and softball and do what we love!
