jacobsen polishes fox cities stadium

greatest asset is the field

The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers have the longest tenure as a minor league affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, more than 11 years. While there are several reasons, perhaps the one that stands out is where they play — Fox Cities Stadium in Grand Chute, Wisconsin.

Stadium director of operations Tom Kulczewski says, “We have a unique organizational structure and understand the focus of our business is a baseball team. Our greatest asset is our field.”

In the mid-1990s, several minor league teams raised the standards for their ballparks to get closer to the quality levels of major league facilities.

Fox Cities Stadium was built in 1995 without public funds and has a capacity of 5,500. Fox Cities Sports Authority, a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing athletics in the area, owns the facility.

Director of Operations, Tom Kulczewski

The Timber Rattler’s season starts in early April and ends in mid-September. In 2005, 70 Timber Rattler games were played on the field. In April, several high school games followed these contests. There is a doubleheader between local universities, and the facility hosted the NCAA Division III College World Series. The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association has played the boys’ high school state tournament on the field since 1998. A few walk/run events start in the parking lot and end on the field, but the summer’s largest event is Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Brett Favre’s annual charity softball game.

Unique equipment plan

Fox Cities Stadium formed a partnership with the local Jacobsen dealer, Horst Distributing, to provide the grounds crew with 10 pieces of equipment from mowers to utility vehicles.

“We are fortunate to have Horst Distributing and Jacobsen as partners,” Kulczewski says. “We can have all the knowledge in the world to maintain the field, but if we don’t have the right equipment we can’t make it happen. We like to say our equipment makes this stadium shine. Horst handles the maintenance and provides us with other resources such as a turf care expert. They take personal pride in how the stadium looks.”

Kulczewski is impressed with the Jacobsen Tri-King™ used to mow the outfield and aprons.

“I’ve driven other brands,” he says, “and this mower is just awesome. It’s easy to drive, has great hydraulics and gives us the quality-of-cut we want for our patterns.”

Attention to detail

The maintenance staff is made up of a year-round head groundskeeper, two full-time college students in summer and a fourth individual who is paid an hourly wage.

Kulczewski, who still helps out on the field, says, “The grounds crew has to have desire. We may have the best field in our league, but we still strive to make it better.”

It’s the little — or not so little — details that count:

- The grounds crew is present during batting practice, not to watch players hit home runs, but to look at ground balls to see how fast they are or if there are bad hops. If a player is pushing off to slide, is he getting good traction? Is the field too wet, too soft or too hard? They’ll talk to pitchers about the condition of the mound and bullpen.

- The line between the infield dirt and outfield grass is edged every five days. Dirt is brushed from the grass to make sure the line is distinct and not raised.

- Kulczewski says the condition of the infield dirt separates Fox Cities from other fields. “We really work the top three to four inches,” he explains. “We fill it in and roll to make sure it’s flat so there are no skips. We made our own nail drag with 2x4s and nine-inch nails. We keep watering and smoothing it out with a two-ton roller. Major league teams do this, but not everyone in our league.”

- The field gets the most comments about marking baselines. The grass line is standard, but the infield is painted by hand. “The baselines are a clay base with dirt on top,” Kulczewski says. “Every day we use a string line from home plate to the foul line and sweep the dirt off the clay. Then we use marking paint with a 4-inch brush and do the baseline by hand. It takes about 45 minutes to do each line and another 20 minutes to dry. After batting practice, it’s simply a matter of sweeping off the line because the paint is on clay. This is huge when we have the tournaments because there are only 15 minutes between games. One person patches the mound, another drags the infield, and another rakes the baseline and sweeps off the line. If the line needs patching, we just use spray paint.”

Strive to be the best

Kulczewski has always loved baseball. While in college he completed two paid internships on the Fox Cities grounds crew. He worked for more than a year on the grounds crew at the Oakland
A’s spring training facility in Phoenix before returning to the Timber Rattlers in his present position in November 2002.

“We want players and coaches to say this is the best field they’ve ever played on,” he says. “Every year we strive to be the best. It’s a standard set by previous groundskeepers, everything from the aesthetics for the fans to the quality of the pitching mound.”

The Right Stuff

Fox Cities Stadium’s head groundskeeper left after the 2005 season after having been with the organization full and part-time for more than eight years. Director of operations Tom Kulczewski outlines the qualifications for his replacement.

“There are a lot of people who can do the job,” he says, “but we want to know why they want the job. Hopefully it’s not just because they want to be a head groundskeeper and then think they can sit back, relax and let the assistants do all the work.”

Candidates should:

- Relish the challenge of making the field the best it can be.

- Like the area and the environment.

- Consider mowing on Saturday to be fun.

- Enjoy the tournaments because they’re beneficial.

- Possess other skills for the off-season — painting, carpentry, or the ability to fix things.

- Be a people person who communicates well.