U2 had a concert at Busch Stadium on July 17 and in preparation for the event the Cardinals had to strip the field and then afterward bring in new grass from Colorado, with the recent high temperatures making the re-sodding effort very difficult.
Before last night’s game groundskeeper Bill Findley told Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post Dispatch that the new grass “wasn’t healthy enough to put a pattern on it” and then during the game the visiting Astros fell numerous times on a surface Goold described as “bare and the dirt exposed to the drying and cracking heat.”
Here’s how Zachary Levine of the Houston Chronicle described the issues:
Now, in fairness to U2 (which are words I never expected to type, ever) some of that can probably just be blamed on the Astros being a terrible team with an MLB-worst 33-69 record. After all, they fall down and make errors plenty no matter the locale. With that said, afterward several players and coaches talked about how little traction there was on the new grass.
Or as Hunter Pence put it: “I didn’t expect it to be tough until I fell down.”
Words to live by, really.
