"If Horses Can't Eat It…"
Picture a vast expanse of vivid green, each blade the exact same height. No weeds popping up, no mud, no brown patches killed by insects, grubs, or drought. No dips or divots, no ruts or stray roots clawing their way through to the surface. One uniform shade of green stretches out before me, unmarred and unmarked except for the perfectly painted lines. This isn't a vision of an outrageously priced golf course or even of a well-manicured baseball field. It's Astroturf. Since the days of cavemen we've been trying to tame the wilderness and control Mother Nature. In the middle of the Twentieth Century a breakthrough was made and lawn mowers were to become obsolete. The hype however was greater than the actual impact. So while it was thought to be a triumph over nature, artificial turf is the ultimate failure of man to tame nature.
First used in the 1960s artificial turf was designed by the Chemstrand Company in a program that began in the late 1950s as a part of a national fitness initiative. Their fake grass was supposed to be the perfect surface for playing fields in urban areas. The assumption being that the fields in those areas were harder to maintain and would be used by more people thus they needed to be more durable. Starting from the synthetic fibers used in making carpets for gym floors, the company created a new product that, unlike a traditional grass field, was wear resistant and would allow for rapid drainage while still providing maximum cushioning and traction. Eventually in 1964 the Moses Brown School in Rhode Island had a field of what was then known as Chemgrass installed in their athletic facilities. The big break for artificial turf came just a year later as the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball and the Houston Oilers of National Football League began play in the Houston Astrodome. Due to a design flaw the natural grass surface was killed and Chemstrand's parent company was contacted to provide an alternative to real grass being grown indoors. The product was renamed Astroturf in honor of the stadium and artificial turf was on its way. In the next few years Astroturf began to show up in outdoor stadiums where it was not a necessity and even in people's yards. It offered easier maintenance, year round usability, and a certain cachet. In suburbia it allowed the perfect lawn without all of the sweat and hard work and its prohibitive cost made it a real luxury item. This was not to be its primary use and other than surrounding some swimming pools artificial turf has disappeared from private homes. For cities facing the prospect of building new stadiums for their baseball and football teams it provided an easy solution. Astroturf made it possible for both team to share facilities and the multipurpose concrete bowl stadium of the 1970s was born. The artificial turf, still almost universally referred to as Astroturf despite the many competing companies, made it possible to play a football game and a baseball game on the fame field within hours of each other without having to repair the damage done by the earlier game to the field. Artificial turf's resistance to damage and wear kept the playing surface in great shape no matter the abuse or weather.
It was not just physical abuse that was hurled at this fake grass however. The professional baseball player Dick Allen famously said, "If horses can't eat it, I don't want to play on it." This was one of the nicer assessments by those who opposed to the use of fake grass. Other players described it as playing on concrete and purist decried it as taking away the muddy dirty spirit of football and baseball's bad hops. More significantly, along with this new surface came new injuries. Some are common and relatively minor but others have been career threatening. Turf toe is the most famous malady caused by playing on artificial grass and while it is not a career threatening malady it has become a chronic injury for many NFL players. Even more common is turf rash. Really this is just a really bad carpet burn, not something that most people would consider an injury to a professional athlete. Before you join in this assumption, I want you to imagine running as fast as you can and diving head first to slide along a floor covered in shag carpet. Now imagine that carpet being made from stiff plastic blades designed to stand up like grass and provide traction for someone running. So, while it's not a serious injury I can assure you having experienced it, turf rash is not one of the highlights of a football career. The other injuries related to artificial playing surfaces have either been freak accidents like a player's cleat getting caught in a seam in the carpet and causing a torn knee ligament or they are like the destruction of Andre Dawson's knees and just the result of repeated running and jumping on a surface that is essentially concrete. There have been enough of these freak accidents and worn out joints that most baseball teams have returned to natural grass fields and football teams have spent hundreds of millions of dollars repairing seams and replacing faulty turf.
For every advantage that artificial turf offers there is an answer. It lasts longer but is more expensive to repair or replace. It drains better but is slicker when wet. It provides better traction for maneuvering, but also results in more injuries. For every player who likes it there are two or three who curse it. It is an amazing substance but it will never replace grass. Left to their own devices for a period of fifty years and a grass field will maintain its usefulness. It might have to be mowed and relined, but it will be useable. It will be a soft, thick, deep green sea stretching out asking to be run on. An artificial turf field would suffer the ravages of a freeze-thaw cycle. Any damage done wouldn't be naturally repaired. The little padding that began there would be broken down and a cracked slab of concrete covered with a flaking and torn sheet of plastic would be all that remained. We would be reminded of our inability to match nature. Even more than this though, artificial turf is symbolic of our society's relationship with nature.
We love simulated nature. From New York's Central Park to zoos, circuses, and garden made up of "wild" flowers we love the idea of nature in it's most sanitized and tidiest forms. With artificial turf our athletes' uniforms don't get covered in mud even on the wettest football field. It's like the Disney version of war where no one dies and there is no blood. Artificial turf is for people who drive sixty-foot long recreational vehicles complete with waterbeds and satellite dishes to Yellowstone National Park. We want to see nature, we just don't want to be uncomfortable or get ourselves dirty doing it. Our society has become one where virtual tours and simulated experiences are more highly sought than the real things. There are of course people who spend weeks hiking the back country and there are those who would rather hike the Appalachian Trail than simply drive along looking at leaves changing color from the safety of a car. But these people are not the majority of us. Even in Minnesota where we love our lakes we love them more when they are encircled by walking paths and connected to a nicely groomed park. Like artificial turf, these parks give us a feeling of control when we confront nature, but when a storm knows down dozens of trees for example, they also let us know how little control we really have.
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