Har Tru, Bruti'?

I was using Facebook Messenger recently with Ryan, Battlin' Bob, and Joe Plum as I do almost every day (BTW, if there was a way to do a podcast with this bunch and Jeff, who wasn't there yesterday, but often is,-there would be a lot of people laughing their rear off and perhaps as many wondering what is wrong with these people.) and out of nowhere came a memory that I hadn't thought of in years, but at one time was something I dealt with almost every day during baseball season.

Har-Tru is a material that is often used as a replacement for clay on tennis courts.
Several countries use clay as the dominant surface for tennis, mostly in Europe with a few South American countries using clay as well, and there is even a clay court only tournament schedule with fifteen tournaments in Europe and four more in South America.
The most prestigious clay-court tournament is the French Open, which is considered one of the four major tournaments in the game with the grass court at Wimbledon and two conventional "hard courts'' with the Australian and United States open tournaments.

Why these words on clay surfaces from a sport that I seldom watch and don't remember watching since the 70s and 80s?
I'm getting to that, but first, we move to baseball and 1993.
Cherie encouraged me to do something in baseball and on a March Saturday, I drove around to various little leagues and looked to manage a "minor league" team.
As it turned out, times had changed in the nine years since I had left my summer job sitting in a public address booth announcing names, running the scoreboard, and keeping the official scorebook.
Suddenly, coaches were pitching half the game, stealing bases was limited to the second half of the season, and to my shock, there weren't official standings although everyone kept them off the record!
I found all of this out after we had started practice and the worst was yet to come- for the only time that I can ever remember in any league that I watched, played, coached, or umpired- you could clinch a game officially before its conclusion!

How could this occur?
Well, each team in a six-inning game could score only four runs per inning.
That was fine as when I played the limit was six runs per inning, but a limit was reasonable because with weaker teams against stronger teams if you had unlimited scoring every inning, you might play two-inning games at 50-2 as a common score.
However, in this league, even in the last inning, each team could only score four runs, so if you were leading by nine at the end of four innings, the verdict was decided.
Yet unlike "mercy" rule games, the game continued with both teams knowing no matter what they did, the game was decided.
It felt more like "Baseball Math" than actual baseball- keep your fingers crossed that Rob Manfred doesn't hear about this!

My problem was this- when I played and announced (remember only nine years had passed between the booth and coaching) in the sixth and final inning, each team could score as many as they could.
Teams rarely would come back to win from huge deficits, but theoretically, the chance to win was still there and it was easier for the kids to stay involved.
In my first year playing, I remember our last place team losing to the eventual champions by something like 15-1 entering the final inning and rallying with the winning run at the plate with one of our better players at-bat before losing, as one of the more memorable games that I played in.

I despised this rule as it didn't seem natural, but it also caused problems keeping children under control in the late innings.
If you had "won" the game, kids could often be out of control with all the things that excited eight to twelve-year-olds bring and should you be on the side that had lost the game, those final innings could be drudgery complete with some players having to be coaxed to continue and often times giving no effort when they took the field.
In our first season, we didn't have a top pitcher so I decided under this rule, the way to pull upsets was to hopefully get a big lead early with your better pitcher or two, and then pray you had enough to clinch the game early when a lesser pitcher didn't make a difference.
Think of it as a "reverse closer" and we likely won a game or two that we shouldn't have in the first season (I have the records written down from my coaching years, we finished 7-11-1 and fourth of six teams), but I hated "Baseball Math".

Battlin' Bob was my coach and the dugout could be quite hilarious.
One famous time was when this player that always showed up late, often after the game had started and wanted to eat and go to the bathroom.
One rule that I always had from year one to year ten of coaching was no food in the dugout (other than gum and seeds, those were problem enough), so the mother wasn't happy about that, but as I didn't want to spend hot summer hours smelling a player that had pissed himself, the bathroom was allowed (why the kid didn't go before he left his house always made me wonder, he was going to be late anyway?).
This kid used a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles glove that was the type that was barely above the plastic "gloves" that you would find at a Dollar Tree, but that seldom mattered as he wasn't interested in catching the ball anyway and if he did catch a hard thrown/batted ball, it likely would have hurt his hand with that glove!
The game has started, so here comes said player, dragging "Donatello" along and before he even hits the dugout- Asks Battlin' Bob if he can use the bathroom.
Bob's been listening to this all season as he was generally in charge of the dugout and Bob wheels on the kid before he can finish the sentence and says "yeah, yeah, go to the bathroom- PEE PEE".
Brought the house down- I wasn't sure I could continue for a minute!

And all of that brings me back to Har Tru- "The surface of the future".
The people from the higher league constantly lectured us on the wonders and easy maintenance of Har Tru, yet never seemed to want to install it on their field!
Bob did most of the work on the field for our team so I could work on lineups and game preparation, but I did our team's umpiring for other teams and after games (especially umpiring), I would come off the field, coughing this green dust and this stuff would get all over you.
It would get caught into your arm hair, leg hair, and about everything else you could imagine.

Ryan would play on the "Surface of the Future" and he claims that kids from that should consider contacting one of those TV attorneys that advertise their services for various ailments caused by things like asbestos!
The stuff was this green/gray mix in color and it came in bags (similar to ready-mix concrete) that you spread all over the place before wetting it down, which made the field look like a pool table in need of resurfacing.
And if it started to rain during the game, this substance would turn into this concoction that looked like pistachio pudding and would cake on your clothes like someone tossed wet concrete on you-assuming that said concrete was very light green.
I can only imagine the problems that parents had getting those stains out of white uniform pants!

So, that's the memory that came back to me twenty-seven years later when Bob mentioned Har Tru and I was at work thinking about all those times.
I have many stories that I didn't mention and the world of youth sports is such an odd one that's filled with corruption on many levels both on the field (coaches favoring certain players, especially their own) and even more off the field, but I have more good memories than bad from my baseball years with friends I met there to this day.

And for the record, if you ride by that baseball field today- the Har Tru surface is long removed...

P.S- I really wanted to stop by the field and snap a picture, but in the middle of a heat advisory over the next few days, I decided to post now and add a picture later...