Dow Diamond grounds crew gives Major League effort

by Jason Wolverton

Keith Winter is working on a walk-behind greens mower when he offers up his thoughts on his job and the people that do that job with him.

“We’re all just a little bit nuts.”

If you think he’s joking then you probably haven’t paid close enough attention to what some call the hardest working team at Dow Diamond. Winter is an assistant groundskeeper on a crew charged with overseeing one of the nicest Minor League ballparks in all of the country, and the work that goes into keeping the field immaculate is enough to drive anyone a little mad.

As he chats about his job, the Loons are halfway through an eight-game homestand, which means Winter is halfway through a 128-hour work week. During the homestand, members of the grounds crew will arrive at the stadium around 7 a.m. and head home around 11 p.m., long after the last out has been made and the final Loonatic has left the stands. In between, those 16 hours are filled with back-breaking labor in any and all of the elements Mother Nature can conjure up. Like the post office, the crew delivers rain or shine. The only difference is that the mail man gets Sundays off.

Ripping it up

A full-time crew of six is in charge of about 10 of the 22 acres Dow Diamond calls home. This means that during homestands, every task carried out during the day is carefully geared towards playing baseball later that night. But unfortunately for the crew, 250 pound men with steel things on their feet will spend two hours tearing up a field they worked 12 hours to prepare. It’s a cycle of destruction where they keep fixing what the players keep breaking. Rinse. Repeat.

The man in charge of the crew is Matt McQuaid, the head groundskeeper at Dow Diamond. Born in Bridgeport, McQuaid graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Sports and Commercial Turf. He’s worked at either ends of the country so when Loons’ President and General Manager Paul Barbeau gave him a call and offered him his first job as a head groundskeeper, he happily packed up and headed back to Mid-Michigan.

“This is the type of training you can’t learn in the classroom,” he says. “You prepare yourself by getting dirty and making mistakes and getting hands-on experience.”

For McQuaid, that experience involves the obvious – such as mowing, raking, and watering – and the not so obvious like creating a budget and hiring a crew. Plus, McQuaid was hired months before the stadium was even close to being complete, meaning he faced additional unique challenges like having to plan how to care for a field that didn’t yet exist.

“I think we’ve done exceptionally well,” he says. “But it was a bit overwhelming at first.”

Something that can also be overwhelming is the weather. The crew is at the mercy of the forecast, working long hours in the frigid April winds and the steamy July afternoons. When asked about how Mother Nature impacts his work, McQuaid taps his fist to his chest simulating the rapid heartbeat that comes with every rain cloud.

“The heart just goes,” he says. “It gets you all fired up because you know you can make a difference. And that’s when you really earn your money that day.”

One such day was July 18 when severe weather tore through the area and threatened the game against the Swing of the Quad Cities. McQuaid says they were monitoring the weather closely that day and beams over how his crew was able to help save the game. And though continuing rain forced the game to be called after the seventh inning, he was proud the field was in good enough shape to play at all.

“It’s instrumental that you take advantage of the time you have,” he says, “because you never know what mother nature has for you.”

Besides having his attention on the usual game-threatening rain clouds, McQuaid is also counting down the days until the season ends so he can “go in there and rip it up.” He says he often notices little things about the field that he wishes he could fix but can’t because of how frequently the field is used. Major changes to the playing surface require time to heal, something the field at Dow Diamond won’t have until the last home game is played in early September.

“I can’t wait until the season is over with, and I don’t mean because I won’t be doing 16 hours days,” he says. “It means players aren’t on the field, and I can renovate my field the way I want to.”

A family affair

Shelly Fiting stands in the maintenance tunnel and looks out over the field. Like most of the crew, she gives off the distinct impression that she loves what she does in spite of the pay and long hours.

“Some of the stuff we do is unbelievably complicated even though it looks like it should be easy,” she says. “There are four of us that are here all the time and we’re never standing still.”

From the Bullock Creek area, Fiting worked at a golf course prior to her job with the Loons and hadn’t really planned on leaving. She decided to attend the Loons’ job fair at the Valley Plaza Resort just to look around and see what was available. There she met McQuaid and the two started talking. The rest is history.

Now, Fiting speaks glowingly of her position and has even gained minor celebrity status as the lone woman on the crew, often finding herself on the receiving end of “Hey, aren’t you the lady who works on Dow Diamond?” But she takes it all in stride, choosing to embrace it rather than become agitated.

“It’s an honor to be here,” she says. “There are some long hours and some back-breaking work, but I don’t think I could ever replace it.”

And Keith Winter couldn’t replace it either. In fact, he used his job on the crew to replace what he had been doing for the last twenty-some years.

Working in television in Columbus, Ohio, Winter held a fascination for working with ball fields. He had played baseball at Adrian College and coached his children when they played. With the kids older and the youngest heading off to college, Winter decided to take an early retirement and come up to Midland to take the job.

“You have to have a passion for the game and a passion for the field or you can’t do this,” Winter says.

That passion often bleeds into other areas, especially towards the end of an eight-game homestand. McQuaid says the crew is sort of like a family given the amount of time they spend together, the occasional sibling spat included.

“Everybody gets a little touchy with each other, but you just try to do the best you can,” he says. “But by the end of the night, there are going to be a lot of smiling faces because we know we did it.”

Back to the bigs

Matt Ellis is a 25-year-old intern from Michigan State pursuing McQuaid’s degree of Sports and Commercial Turf. He is quiet, doing his job and trying to work his way up to the Majors. When asked what his job responsibilities are, his reply of “Whatever the boss tells me” comes with a straight face. But one thing the boss could tell him is that Ellis’ dream of having a crew of his own one day is one worth having. After all, they share that same dream.

McQuaid’s goal in everything he does is to learn and get better. While he loves Midland and loves working for the Loons, he does not hide the fact that he wants to be a head groundskeeper in the Major Leagues.

“I played baseball in high school and college and my dream was always to become a Major League ballplayer,” he says. “That didn’t happen so I figured if I’m not going to play baseball at a professional level, I’m going to be there one way or another.”

McQuaid has already been there once, having got the proverbial “cup of coffee” in the “Bigs” working on the crew at Comerica Park from 2000 to 2002. There, he worked under Head Groundskeeper Heather Nabozny, the first female head groundskeeper in Major League Baseball history. Nabozny isn’t surprised McQuaid is finding success as a head groundskeeper and believes he’ll have a Major League crew of his own some day.

“Matt’s a really hard worker,” Nabozny says. “When he worked with me he was always out there doing the extra work. He never wanted to set down the rake.”

While McQuaid gets a nod of approval from his old boss Nabozny, he also gets one from his current boss Barbeau.

“Matt presented himself as an outstanding candidate from the start,” Barbeau says. “He had a degree from one of the leading turf management programs in the country and lots of great experience. Most importantly, he is very upbeat and likeable which is important for every position with the Loons. He has exceeded my expectations in those areas as well as his leadership of the field maintenance staff.”

So until that opportunity comes, McQuaid will be focused on Dow Diamond, carrying out the crew’s mantra that they want the field to be the best in the country, regardless of what level it’s at.

“Whether it’s Comerica or an Alabama Independent League, you want to walk up here each day and have the fans and players say it looks great,” he says. “That’s why you come in and do it.”