GRANT TRENBEATH: THE SECOND HOME GAME - LOCKING IN AND GETTING BACK TO RHYTHM

One of my most favorite days of the baseball season was the 2nd home game of the year.

Yes, Opening Day is great, with all of the pomp, circumstance and pageantry. New uniforms are introduced on the player’s backs as well as the Team Shops. Fresh face additions to the team that were acquired or promoted during the offseason are introduced to the home fans while lining up with the returning fan favorites on the foul lines pregame. Opening Day logos are put out on the field along with the bunting strewn throughout the Ballpark. And, of course, everyone is in first place.

The last day of the season is pretty great too. That could be for a couple of different reasons. First, that your team is headed to the postseason, and even though you are mentally and physically drained from the season, a shot of adrenaline kicks in, and you find energy reserves you never knew you had. New sets of challenges emerge like painting postseason logos and dealing with practice/media days, along with all of the media broadcast set/camera/microphone demands. You never know how long the ride will last, but if you’re fortunate to get on the ride, you hope the ride never ends until the World Series.

Then there’s the ending of the season when it’s like a mercy killing, because your team was mathematically (or mentally) eliminated for what seems like weeks before the season concluded. You’ve been looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel, and a change of schedule that would give you a little more time away from the Ballpark than you’ve had for the previous 6 months. Maybe even a trip or two somewhere.

I’ve experienced both ends of this spectrum. If I was able to, I would choose the former every time. As great as it was to experience two World Series appearances (2001 and 2023), I unfortunately got to experience quite a few more of the latter where my team wasn’t in contention at the end of the season. Because of the season, I know there are quite a few baseball marriages in November, like myself. You take a little time to get away from the Ballpark, spend (make up) time with the family, work a number of offseason events and try to recharge your batteries for another 6 months, hopefully 7 months run. As the NFL season starts wrapping up their season with their playoffs, I inevitably would start looking forward to the rhythm, routine and the grind of the upcoming season. You could call it an annual sickness.

That’s what the 2nd home game of the year meant to me. Opening Day meant that the Grounds Crew, vendors and myself had completed all of the offseason projects and preseason preparations. Grounds Crew vacancies had been hired and filled with new uniforms handed out. The new equipment purchased was being put to use. The 2nd game meant locking it in and getting back into the rhythm and routine of the season, and repeating that over and over and over again for the next 6 months.

Opening Day seemed like it was about everything besides baseball. The 2nd home game felt like baseball was back as the focal point.

Call it my body clock, or calendar to be more precise. When the weather started to get warmer (that would just be hotter in Arizona), I would start craving the rhythm, routine and schedule of the season. Part of the rhythm was that no season was like a previous season. The fact that no season was like any other season might not sound like rhythm, but it was because it was consistently different year after year. I fed off of what new challenges the next season would bring in the scope of the job. Sometimes those new challenges would be implementing a change to the regular routine of something, or trying a new product. Each season would have its own learning curve. That would include getting to know that season’s team personnel and making the necessary tweaks to the system to cater to someone if needed. All of this would come with a consistent approach of putting the job and field first, and always trying to improve if and where possible. When you do something over and over, whether it’s the schedule, working the infield dirt, cleaning the warning track, mowing, packing mounds and plates, that practically becomes reflex, and you start to do things instinctively. I would be thinking a day, to a week, to a month ahead because the current day had already been run through in my mind numerous times. The job was a constant in my life, something that was sure, and something that I could feel good about doing over and over, and usually see positive results. The repetition became predictable, which was therapeutic. Part of our job was to try to provide a consistent playing field product from game to game the best we could, which would hopefully make playing conditions consistently positive and predictable for our home team, giving them that home field advantage. That meant finding a routine, fine tuning that routine if needed, and trying to repeat it as much as possible. Everybody has some routines in their lives. Break up or change that routine, and different outcomes can happen, like forgetting your phone/wallet/glasses at home when you leave your house. Now having a retractable roof over our heads made the conditions more predictable and consistent, so we didn’t have to deal with weather situations like most other Ballparks. However, having the roof open vs the roof closed there is a big difference. Especially if you have the hair dryer winds of Arizona circulating through the Ballpark. Another aspect of having a roof, early work or batting practice was guaranteed every day for teams and was never cancelled due to weather.

Some would say that the baseball season is a marathon. As a Groundskeeper, I would disagree. The baseball season to me was a long sprint. If you let up or coast at any time, the job could lap you, and you could never get that missed opportunity back. You could pay for that missed opportunity for the rest of the season, or endlessly try to catch back up. That was especially true when we were growing grass in the Ballpark. That constant demand of proving oneself over and over while not really allowing yourself room for error was something that motivated me. It was a quest for perfection. Even though perfection could seldom if ever be achieved, it didn’t keep you from trying to achieve it. Now that can cause a great deal of stress. Especially if you feel like you’re the only field advocate in your organization. Or you know that your physical growing conditions were going to limit your abilities compared to other outdoor Ballparks. I like to think of it as a player who seeks out the most pressure-packed part of the game and who wants to be in the middle of the action when that time comes. To me, people who welcome and look for that pressure and do not shy away from it, usually have a greater chance of success in those situations.

You hear players and coaches say from time to time, you have to “trust the process”. That is true with Groundskeepers too. Your field is going to experience some ups and downs during the season. That can be because of manufactured events like a long homestand or major non-baseball events being scheduled, or something more unpredictable like the weather. Your field is front and center on display every game for the world to critique, and there are plenty of critics out there that want to point out your flaws (one could amuse themselves for hours if they wanted to read social media comments). This is where Groundskeepers trust their process. Sometimes these periods are predictable, and Groundskeepers have planned for this particular moment weeks to months in advance. You have a game plan on how to go into this manufactured situation the best you can to minimize potential damage and extra work (hopefully your organization has empowered you with the information and support needed to formulate and implement this game plan). Groundskeepers have mapped out what needs to be done after this situation to recover and get back to your peak ability as soon as possible. There are other times when there are non-controllable/foreseeable variables, like weather. These situations can seem as though you empty your tool box with anything and everything just to take one small step forward, get through that day or night, and you deal with the consequences later.

Opening Day is great, and I was fortunate to celebrate and enjoy 27 of them. However, home game #2 was when it was officially “Game On”, and the race was under way.

Posted July 15, 2025