500 Consecutive Sellouts

Good evening everyone! As the title of this entry suggests, the game today against the Florida Marlins marks the 500th consecutive sold out game at Fenway Park, a Major League Baseball record, and extremely impressive, to say the least. This streak spans like 6 seasons, dating back to May 15, 2003. As I mentioned yesterday, my boss was planning for a special design to be put into the outfield today, as I later found out would be to coincide with the sellout today.

I got to work at 8 AM, and after doing most of the usual jobs around the ballpark, we got to work on the design for the day at about 10:30. This design in the outfield would be the number "500" spanning the width of the outfield. We flagged off the design, and then using walk-behind Toro mowers the pattern was initially put in the grass by allowing the roller on the mower to lay the grass blades in certain directions, causing for light to reflect off the grass a certain way. The mowers were used to "burn" the image into the turf by making multiple passes with the mower/roller. Along with mowers, we used heavy rollers that we pushed over the turf, and also our head groundskeeper, Dave, used water to help spray in the design. In all, I think the design turned out really well.



The picture above is the view of the "500" from the highest level of the stadium, near the press box.



And above is some detail on the "5" of the "500", so you may have a better idea of how the grass appears with the design in it.

If you click on the pictures above they will open up larger.

I ended up leaving work today at about 3 PM, and went toward downtown to run some errands before heading back to the dorm to relax and watch the game on television. I was supposed to go into work at 8 AM tomorrow, but we're expecting nasty weather this weekend, once again, and Griff called me this afternoon asking me to come in a little earlier to prepare for the rain. So, now I'll be heading to Fenway at 7 AM, in what may be the beginning of a long day and weekend at the ballpark. Oh, my boss is a representative for Scott's, the turf company, and he gave us all Boston Red Sox Scott's coozies today before we left. And, apparently he had an Atlanta Braves Scott's coozie for some random reason, and he, knowing they're the team I probably care the most about, gave me one of those too.

I think that's all I've got for today people. Hope everyone has a fabulous night, I'll be updating again tomorrow after what I hope is a nice, dry day at the ballpark! Adios!