The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

King Kaufman mentioned that there’s a new book out about groundskeeping:

Writing my own book turned me into a total geek for groundskeeping. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (I’ll post a longer review later) but I’m excited to read this. This part of the description:

Peter Morris demonstrates that many of the game’s rules and customs actually arose as concessions to the daunting practical difficulties of creating a baseball diamond.

Sounds exactly like the central tenet of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball,

Emil Bossard’s widely credited with the invention of “modern” groundskeeping, including the invention of the batting practice screens, tarps, and most of the techniques that are associated with what we think of as the work of the grounds crew today. He (and his kids) dominate the groundskeeping chapter in Cheater’s Guide, and in the Notes I mention how much I’d have loved to have seen a whole book about their work.

I’m intrigued to see how groundskeeping worked when just getting a field together was a monumental task, when parks burned down fairly regularly, and the people tasked with maintaining them wouldn’t have access to the same tools, resources, and knowledge that Bossard did.