Grant's new baseball setting sure to grow on Kazlausky

Good thing Fritz Kazlausky loves to garden.

Outside of sports, it might be his biggest interest. And back when he was the head baseball coach at Grant, Kazlausky had to garden on a grand scale.

His team's field was his "garden."

"I remember being out there at night, using the light from the football field, and I'd be dragging our field by hand. I'd also cut the edging by hand," said Kazlausky, Grant's head coach for 27 years, from 1968 to 1994.

"We even did this crazy thing back then to dry the field. You probably wouldn't do it nowadays. (Laughing). But we'd buy gallons and gallons of gasoline, pour it all over (the infield dirt) and set it on fire. We'd have these huge fires going out there and it actually helped to dry out the field."

Singed eyebrows aside, Kazlausky didn't mind the field work. It was a labor of love.

"I'm always out in my own yard working on things anyway. I love that kind of stuff. We just wanted to do whatever we could to make the field nice."

Grant's field is pretty nice now, too.

In fact, it just got a major overhaul that has elevated it to one of the nicest high school baseball facilities in Lake County. There are now brand new dugouts at Grant, and a new backstop with sky-high, 60-foot netting that runs all the way down the first-base and third-base lines. There's also a new warning track and new infield dirt.

New bullpens and a new scoreboard will be installed within the next week or two. There's also talk about making the press box behind home plate two levels.

It seemed only fitting to Dave Behm, the current head baseball coach at Grant, that when the new and improved facility was finally completed that it be named after the one person who has probably spent more time there in the last 50 years than anyone else.

So next month, in a ceremony on May 12, Grant's field will be named after Kazlausky, who played on the varsity baseball team at Grant himself for four seasons in the mid-1950s as a shortstop, before returning to his alma mater to teach and coach.

"So much of the baseball team's history at Grant is wrapped up in Kaz," Behm said. "We needed to put his name on the field."

All together, Kazlausky has spent 39 seasons as a baseball coach at Grant, as either an assistant or head coach. Retired from teaching since 1994, Kazlausky, now 77, took some time off from coaching at Grant in 2003, mostly to spend time with his grandchildren, and happily returned to the dugout in 2013. He has spent the last three seasons as an assistant coach for the Bulldogs.

"I have been so fortunate at Grant, I've been a very lucky person," Kazlausky said. "I don't know why, but I have. I've been around a lot of great people and coached a lot of great kids.

"And what an honor this (the field naming) is. Dave Behm and his staff have been top-notch. And (superintendent) Christy Sefcik and (athletic director) Dick Knar have done a great job of making improvements at Grant like this. I don't really like people overdoing it for me, but this is so nice. I really appreciate it."

The naming of the field after Kazlausky could almost be considered a lifetime achievement award that encompasses his reach across the entire athletic department. Kazlausky could easily be nicknamed "Mr. Grant."

Kazlausky also spent 44 seasons as an assistant or underlevel coach in the boys basketball program at Grant, with his last season being in 2002. He had been a basketball player himself at Grant too, a guard for four years.

Likewise, he played football at Grant. He was a running back and defensive back for four years and coached 12 seasons of football at Grant.

That means Kazlausky, who went on to play college baseball at Wisconsin-Stout, has coached 95 seasons at Grant and has played 12 seasons there, for a total of 107 seasons of either coaching or playing at his alma mater. That's a number that has been lost on no one. Kazlausky has already been inducted into the Illinois Baseball Coaches and Illinois Basketball Coaches halls of fame.

"Fritz is a great coach and our kids really respect him and I really respect him, but it's not just about baseball, it's about everything he's done at Grant," Behm said of Kazlausky and his honor. "That's a lot of years of service to the community."

Kazlausky and his family have certainly been fixtures in the community, and at Grant. Grant opened in 1930 and Kazlausky's father Fritz Sr., also a football and basketball player at Grant, graduated in the mid-1930s.

"Every once in a while, we'd get out his (Grant) albums and look him up," Kazlausky said of his dad. "That was fun. I remember following all the athletes at Grant when I was a kid. That would have been in the early '50s."

By the 1980s, Kazlausky's own children, Jill, David, Lisa and Mike, were going to Grant. David and Mike played baseball for Kazlausky, and Mike wound up being an all-American shortstop who played at Air Force. He is now the head baseball coach there.

Now, Kazlausky and his wife Bunny, have grandchildren, Brooke (track) and Noah (wrestling) Grabek, who are athletes at Grant.

"I'm just very proud," Kazlausky said. "It's been a lot of good years at Grant. It's a really good school and I enjoy it so much."

Kazlausky doubts he's ready to say goodbye any time soon.

"The great thing about these kids is that they keep me young," Kazlausky said. "It's great being around them and their energy. Every year, I say, 'OK, this is it. I'm done coaching.' But then I think, 'Look at who we have coming back next year. I want to be a part of that. OK, one more year.'

"The future is really bright at Grant, so who knows (how much longer)."

How about long enough to fully appreciate the view from Grant's new dugouts of the new scoreboard that will bear his name.

That might never get old.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

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