Astroturf...Cubs Carpet?

Artificial grass made its first baseball appearance in 1966 at the Houston Astrodome. The dome opened in 1965 with a grass surface. It was thought that light coming through the roof would provide enough sunlight for the grass to grow. However glare from the dome made it difficult to follow a flyball, so the dome was painted. This allowed less light in and effectively killed the grass. The Astros solved the dead grass problem by installing AstroTurf.

Many of you probably already knew that. What you may not know is the name of the second major league ballpark to install AstroTurf. A big hint, of course, can be found at the top of the page. And why else would I be posting about it.

The second ballpark to install AstroTurf was....drumroll please.....Wrigley Field. The turf was installed in May of 1967, only one year after the Astros put theirs in. Now you may be saying to yourself, "I didn't know the Cubs played on AstroTurf." Well, actually, they didn't.

The turf was not installed on the field. It was used in the center field bleachers as a hitter's background. Immediately after the bleachers were built in 1937, hitters began complaining about losing the pitch in the white shirts of the fans in centerfield. Several sections were eventually closed off to spectators by the 1950's.

In May of 1967, huge sheets of AstroTurf were installed over the closed sections and provided a much better hitting background. The AstroTurf remained in place until the early 1990's when it was replaced by juniper bushes. Today, a restaurant has been built in the location with just a few rows of junipers in front of the restaurant.

In both of these cards you can see the bright green AstroTurf in the background.





But the Cub's AstroTurf story doesn't end in the bleachers. According to this Sporting News article from November 30,1968, the Cubs were seriously considering installing artificial grass on the playing surface. It states that owner P.K. Wrigley would like to install it as soon as money is available. It would have to wait until after the 1969 season because he was already spending $500,000 on ballpark improvements.

The spark of the idea is also interesting: Bears star running back Gale Sayers was seriously injured at Wrigley Field in early November, 1968 (this was dealt with in the movie Brian's Song...cue sappy music, everyone get their Kleenex). Wrigley was wondering if the injury would have been avoided it the ballpark had AstroTurf. That shows just how new the artificial turf concept was at the time. It took only a few more years before the stuff was seen as an injury cause, not prevention. If you'd like to read the entire article, email me and I can send you a PDF of the article.



Obviously (and thankfully) it was never installed.I can't imagine what Wrigley Field would have looked like with the fake grass up against the ivy walls. As a baseball purist, I am glad it never happened.

Tomorrow I'll have more on Chicago's other AstroTurf connection.