Hadlock is ready for baseball

Almost four weeks and 38 inches of snow ago, Hadlock Field looked more like an Olympic skiing venue than a baseball park.

Yet just a day before the Portland Sea Dogs’ scheduled season-opening game, the team was not only ready to play ball, but given the green light to hold workouts (batting practice, fielding drills, etc.) on the outfield and infield grass.

Yes… Grass. The green stuff. Well, light green. It may not be as lush and dark as it will eventually be, but at least it’s not fake, painted-on Astro Turf.

How did they do that?

“The grounds crew has done a tremendous job,” said Sea Dogs president and general manager Charlie Eshbach. “They’ve done it before, but that was the most snow we’ve had that late.”

The Hadlock grounds crew used three small Bobcat front end loaders to clear the field in the wee hours of the night and morning, while the ground was still frozen, so the field wouldn’t be damaged.

“We were going from 3 to 10 a.m. because that was the only time the ground was hard and we could clear it without damaging it. They were out there a good 10 days doing that,” Eshbach explained.

That was just what they had to do for the playing field. Meanwhile, a crew of Sea Dog staff members took to the seats – box, field level and cheap alike – with shovels and brooms to chisel, sweep, scoop and chip away the snow dumped in the seats and all over the concourses, steps and aisles.

The bottom line is the field is ready for some baseball and the game is on – weather permitting – at 6 p.m. Thursday. Approximately 7,000 fans are expected for Portland’s 12th home-opener.

“There’s nothing now to stand in our way for opening day,” Eshbach said with a nervous chuckle after realizing he was tempting fate. “They’ll have workouts at USM [University of Southern Maine] Tuesday and our field on Wednesday.”