Welcome to spring baseball, and don't forget your hat(s)

Perhaps the standard-issue uniform that high school baseball coaches wear during games should be revised.

Jersey. Check. Pants. Check. Hat. Ummmm.

There's the problem. Only one?

These guys need more hats. After all, they're often required to wear many just to do their jobs.

Baseball coaches -- and to a degree their colleagues who coach softball -- aren't just coaches. They're also part groundskeeper and landscaper as well as part weatherman.

I don't want to diminish the duties of any high school coach. All of the coaches I know around here, no matter what the sport, put in an exorbitant amount of time to help make their players the best they can be. And a lot of that time comes when the coaches are technically off the clock.

Yet, baseball coaches are at an entirely different level still.

Basketball coaches aren't spending their summers resurfacing the courts that their teams play on. And most football coaches aren't expected to paint the lines on their fields.

But an inherent part of being a baseball coach is tending to your field -- smoothing it, raking it, grooming it, watering it, you name it.

Most schools have groundskeepers, but the precision with which a baseball field must be maintained requires extra work and man-hours that no school district could afford to hire out.

Enter the baseball coach, who is also chained to the Weather Channel. Guys who once majored in history or finance in college suddenly find themselves experts at weather patterns and frost levels. They spend hours tracking storms and fronts just so that they can determine if they can get in their practices and games.

Weather comes into play sometimes during football season, but it's magnified many times over during the volatile spring baseball season. Just consider the events of the last week. Baseball coaches had their teams outside last Thursday only to have to deal with 11 inches of snow on the ground by Friday.

I decided I wanted to do a story about the added responsibilities a baseball coach faces after I interviewed all of the coaches in our Lake County coverage area for our season preview, which ran last week.

This was right before the big snowstorm came and the ground was snow-free, but soggy.

I can't tell you how many guys were telling me that all they were hoping for was a big rain.

Say what? I was confused. You guys want rain to fall on an already soggy ground?

Absolutely. They all very matter-of-factly informed me about how there were six to seven inches of frost still in the ground. And that a rain would bring the frost out quickly.

Otherwise, the frost would come up slowly and cause a sloppy, soggy effect over a more prolonged period of time.

I knew right then and there that I needed to expose these guys for who they really are. And that is, of course, far more than just baseball coaches.

I decided to speak to a few coaches who happen to not only head up some of the most successful programs in Lake County, but also preside over some of the best fields.

Here are excerpts from my conversations with Carmel coach Chuck Gandolfi, Mundelein coach Todd Parola and Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca.

PBM: You are married to baseball and to your field, aren't you? Literally.

Gandolfi: "On my wedding day 16 years ago, I made my wife (Linda) come water the field with me at 6 in the morning. That's the honest to God truth. We had gotten new sod the day before, and it had to be watered. So...she came to the field to help me water it. It was a sign of things to come. She still thinks that I care more about the field than I do our own yard."

PBM: So what looks better -- the field at school or your own yard?

Gandolfi: (Laughs) "The field."

Parola: "It's funny you ask that. You should probably be asking my wife (Pam). We just had this argument (two weekends ago) because I probably spent about 18 hours on the field and I get home and my yard isn't looking too good (Laughs.) My wife let me have it. But if we wouldn't have spent that time on the field, we wouldn't have played last week." (Mundelein was the only team in Lake County to get in a home game before last Friday's snow.)

PBM: Coaching baseball makes for a long day, doesn't it?

Mazzuca: "It does, without a doubt. It's really hard when you have a 6-week-old baby at home, too. But baseball wives, baseball moms, they just understand that just because practice is over or the game is over doesn't mean the coaches or the players get to go home."

PBM: That's when the real work begins, right?

Gandolfi: "We do all the dragging and raking (of the infield dirt) after every game and practice. We work on our mound, we work on our plate. (The dirt) all has to be packed backed down. One of our assistant coaches (Joe May) spent about five or six hours on Saturday just on home plate. He was out there taking all the soupy stuff off with wheelbarrows and a shovel and then working in the (drying compound)."

Parola: "After each game, the kids have certain duties they have to perform and each kid is spending 15 to 20 minutes and there's 20 kids. So, that's a lot of man-hours. But that's a good week. Depending on the weather, there are weeks where my assistants and I will spend 35 to 40 hours working on that field."

Mazzuca: "We drag the field, put the mound and the batter's boxes back together. We put clay bricks inside the boxes and the mound and pack it all in. We are the ones who really take care of all of that. You're talking at least an extra five to six hours per week on top of baseball."

PBM: I'm sure it's a labor of love, but most other high school coaches aren't "loving" their sports that much.

Mazzuca: "Baseball is pretty unique. We're the only team that really puts our own (facilities) together and takes care of them."

Parola: "Oh, without a doubt. I've coached football and basketball and golf. The time outside of coaching in baseball is tenfold to those other sports. It would be nice to just show up and coach. Being the baseball coach, you put a lot of your own time in to get the field ready -- weekends and everything."

PBM: In fact, you guys are working on the field almost year round -- sprinkling in the summer, projects in the fall. It almost never ends, right?

Parola: "We do a lot of our maintenance in the fall -- a lot of the edging and re-grading and field improvement projects so that we can 'lay our field to rest' by mid-November. I'm very fortunate because my assistant, Neil McLoughlin, has been coaching many years and he's a retired teacher now. He's able to do a lot with the field during the day. The kids also have service hours that they do. We have a couple of work days in the fall where they'll work on the field. We lay down seed, plant sod, fertilize and edge and re-grade the field to level it out. We do a lot."

Gandolfi: "The biggest job for us is sprinkling because we don't have a watering system. We have to set the sprinkler up and go move it and go move it again and go move it again and again and then drag it off the field. It takes a couple of hours to do the whole thing. In the past, when my son would have Little League games, I'd go back and move the sprinklers between games. A lot of people don't realize the time you put in just doing that. But it's so important. You're watering not so much to make the grass grow, you're watering so the kids don't get killed by a 100 mile-per-hour ball that takes a wicked hop. You want a true hop. You want a softer infield. You want kids to be confident getting down in front of a ground ball."

PBM: Is that why baseball coaches can get so fanatical about the maintenance and upkeep of their fields? Working on the field helps to ensure safety and to preserve the integrity of the game.

Parola: "Without a doubt. Here's the biggest difference between baseball and football. If the field is bad, we don't play. Football can still get a game in. The whole baseball experience is much more enjoyable, it's a much better experience on a quality field. It's been that way forever. You want good hops, you want the ball bouncing true.

Mazzuca: "You never want to have a game lost because of a bad hop. Those are things coaches take pride in. You want your field playing as true as possible. You want the field as level as possible."

PBM: Every school has a grounds crew. But I bet there's no way those crews would have time to maintain your fields. The precision that baseball fields demand would probably bust the grounds budget.

Mazzuca: "It would. Our grounds crew loves baseball and we have a real good relationship with them and they help us out by mowing and doing the (foul) lines. But they have so many other things they have to take care of as well. They can't do it all."

PBM: That's why it's essential that the players help out, right? When they come in as freshmen are they shocked at that part of their commitment to the team?

Gandolfi: "Yeah, they're a little surprised. But they learn that it's just that way. I mean, when I played at Illinois State, I was a rock picker. The JV kids were rock pickers and you didn't get to go in at night until your bucket reached a certain level with rocks. And we were the tarp guys, too. We hated that tarp. But you just knew you had to do it."

Mazzuca: "You quickly point out the freshmen and the freshmen parents … The parents are the ones who wait around after practice. They wonder why the kids aren't coming out right away. (Laughs) They quickly realize, just like their sons do, that not only are you playing baseball, you're also doing a little landscaping as well."

PBM: I'm sure it's hard work, but do the players eventually become agreeable to the work?

Gandolfi: "They do. We want our kids to take pride in their field. I think they like taking care of their own position. Like, I tell my shortstop and second baseman, you groom this area in front of you the way you want it. We've had pitchers who wouldn't let anyone else touch the mound because they wanted to fix it exactly the way they wanted."

Parola: "It's an investment for them. They put the work in and they see that a better field plays better for them."

Mazzuca: "The kids definitely take a lot of pride in the area that they play in."

PBM: So, other than your own, of course, what field in Lake County is the best field to play on?

Mazzuca: "Our entire conference (North Suburban Conference) is really good. Libertyville, in particular, has done a great job redoing their whole infield and backstops. Lake Forest is a great field. And Barrington is always really good."

Gandolfi: "Bowen Park in Waukegan. It's where they used to hold the regional up here. It's really nice. I'd say Barrington has always been real nice and Stevenson's field has really taken off. Libertyville has done a lot, too.

Parola: "Libertyville has really made some big improvements as far as the dugouts and the netting is concerned. And we're getting there, too. But as far as the quality of the field, I always enjoy going over to Stevenson. That's the top of the line."

PBM: Bob Mackey (who retired as Stevenson's coach last spring after 30 years) was very dedicated to maintaining his field. Most coaches in the area cite Stevenson as the gold standard in terms of field quality. Why is that?

Mazzuca: "It's the constant upkeep that's been done. But I think the field was also very well planned out by the developers. They did a phenomenal job of planning for drainage and the dirt that they used is this volcanic ash that drains and dries up really well. A lot of forethought went into that. If you look at our (infield) dirt, it's a red dirt as opposed to the brown dirt you see at most high school fields. That's the volcanic ash. There's also a lot of (drying compound) mixed right in with the infield dirt and that helps keep things dry."

PBM: Speaking of wet fields versus dry fields, the weather is always on your minds, isn't it? Again, you're part coach, part groundskeeper and part weatherman, right?

Mazzuca: "My wife (Audrey) thinks I'm crazy because I'm always checking my phone. I've got a Doppler radar on my phone. I have an iPhone that has the Internet. I downloaded a couple of different radars so that when I'm down at the field, I'll be able to know what kind of window we have (if a storm is approaching)."

PBM: That's incredible.

Mazzuca: "Or sick. One of the two."

PBM: Not sick. Just incredibly necessary. Weather reports are pretty much a baseball coach's Bible during the season, right?

Parola: "I'm not really technically inclined but I'm on the computer all the time in the spring going to weather.com and the AccuWeather reports and checking the Doppler. My daughter (Paige) is always bugging me to get off the computer. But I've got to check out the weather and the forecasts."

Gandolfi: "The weather station becomes our favorite station. You can plan your practice by the weather station. I'm not a weather expert, but I've got a pretty good idea of what's going to happen."

Mazzuca: Going to college as a history major, I never thought I'd talk so much about seeding and taking care of dirt and the radar and types of clouds and frost lines. But it's something you pick up and take pride in and you end up kind of liking it. Older coaches pass it on to younger coaches. It's kind of neat actually."

PBM: Speaking of the frost line, what's the deal with the frost? How do all of you coaches know how much frost is in the ground?

Gandolfi: "You talk to construction guys all the time. If you're driving down the road and the workers are out, you just yell out your window. 'Hey, how deep is the frost right now?' (Laughs) Hey, you need to know."

Parola: "You could put a shovel in the ground, I guess. I have a few ponds by my house that are good indicators as to how much frost is in the ground and I have a few parents who work for ComEd or the village and they do digging and they have a good idea on it, too."

PBM: So after all the working on the field and all the monitoring of the weather, is there any time left just for coaching?

Gandolfi: "You've just got to budget your time and the kids know that we've got to work on the field. So we practice in shifts. When we're working with the infielders, the outfielders are turning the infield over and vice versa. What are you going to do?"

Mazzuca: "There is, but the window is small to work on baseball. Before practice, you're the weatherman. Then, you're the landscaper after practice. It makes for a long day."

Parola: "Unfortunately, not enough. I talk to my guys and say that while we (the coaches) are working on the field, you've got to make sure you're getting ready to play. They have to get in the cages and get swings in, get loose, get ready to play. On those days when the weather is iffy, we've got to spend a lot of time getting the field ready and they've kind of got to get themselves ready. We're not forgetting about them, but the field has to be prepared, too."

PBM: What if the field didn't have to be prepared? What if weather didn't have to be such a factor? Some schools in Lake County have installed artificial turf in their football stadiums. How much easier would your life be if that surface was installed on your field?

Mazzuca: "That would be so great!

Parola: "Ahhhhh! Wow! Right before we left (on this week's downstate spring break trip), I peeked into Perry Wilhelm's office (the athletic director at Mundelein) and I mentioned to him, 'It'd be nice to have turf right about now.' Man, would that be so nice."

Gandolfi: "Don't even go there!" (Laughs) It would be phenomenal. We've already priced it out. It would be about $110,000 to do just the infield and about a million to add the entire outfield. I don't know. We'll see. But I think that would be the nicest thing there is."