FoundSF

Historical Essay

by Matt Sieger

Johnnie LeMaster

photo courtesy of @S.F. Giants

Like many major league teams in the 1970s and 1980s, the Giants experimented with AstroTurf from 1970-78. It wouldn’t have changed anything I wrote in my book, The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978. I did quote Duane Kuiper, the second baseman who formed a double-play combination with shortstop Johnnie LeMaster from 1982-84 as saying, “We clearly played on the worst infield in baseball. We were never allowed to use that as an excuse, but the wind would tear up the infield and it would dry out.”

AstroTurf actually helped LeMaster in his first major league at bat with the Giants on September 2, 1975, at Candlestick. LeMaster recalled, “I got up there and Don Sutton was pitching. The first pitch he throws me was a big curve and I had no chance of hitting it. Some fan in the stands yells, ‘Hey kid, this is the big leagues!’ The next pitch was the same, and I swung and missed again. The same fan yells out the same thing, and I’m thinking to myself, no kidding, I’ve never seen a pitch like that. But, the next pitch was a fastball and I hit a line drive up the middle. It hit a seam on the field and the ball jumped over the center fielder’s head. I started running like crazy and I got a standup inside-the-park home run. I thought, man—this is easy!”

Houston’s Astrodome was the first stadium to use artificial turf in 1966. The stadium, which opened in 1965, first had grass. The building’s roof was made up of over 4,000 Lucite panels to let in the sun. But the panels caused so much glare during practices in the spring that players had trouble catching pop flies. So the Astros painted the outside of the dome off-white, which caused the grass to die. The Astros played the last few weeks of the 1965 season on spray-painted dirt.

Proponents of artificial turf touted these benefits: ease of maintenance, simpler conversion from baseball to football or vice-versa, better drainage, and fewer injuries.

Football was the main reason for the spread of artificial surfaces, as many of the new stadiums being built in the late 1960s and early 1970s were multipurpose. Baseball didn’t have much say in the matter.

The Chicago White Sox were the second major league team to switch from grass, installing a synthetic infield in 1969, hoping it would lead to higher-scoring games. In 1970, not only were all new parks being built with artificial surfaces, but existing parks were replacing their natural grass. The first outdoor National League game on turf was at Candlestick on April 7, 1970, the Astros defeating the Giants, 8-5.

Not everyone at Candlestick was a fan of the synthetic surface. One groundskeeper said, “This modern age, you know, everything seems to be going on the phony side, so I guess we gotta go along with the times. And not seeing grass grow out here anymore and not having to cut anything, I think I’m gonna be kind of lonesome.”

The artificial turf craze reached its peak in both 1977 and 1982, when ten of the twenty-six major league stadiums employed it.

The first World Series played exclusively on artificial turf was in 1980 between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Kansas City Royals. Not all players were synthetic fans.

Kansas City outfielder Amos Otis said, “On artificial turf the ball takes crazy high bounces. On natural grass it takes natural bounces.”

Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa observed, “You tend to get a little lazy on this stuff [artificial turf]. It’s so quick, you lay back and wait for the ball to come to you.”

As Ross Atkin wrote in the Christian Science Monitor, “The new fields have practically revolutionized the game, turning what might be routine grounders on grass into base hits.”

But the worm began to turn. As difficult it was to field on Candlestick’s wind-battered, dried-up natural infield, it wasn’t any picnic on the Giants’ AstroTurf either. The artificial surface at Candlestick, which hosted the San Francisco 49ers as well as the Giants, was considered the hardest surface to play on in the NFL. The under-padding deteriorated to the extent that there was zero resilience, and the playing surface became as hard as a rock. The surface became matted when the plastic “grass” blades broke down in sunlight. The seams split apart, causing a safety hazard. The wet, damp weather resulted in poor traction, causing players to slip.

In 1979, Candlestick’s 130,000 square feet of deteriorated synthetic turf was ripped up and replaced by natural grass at a cost of $868,000. The Giants wanted to keep the AstroTurf, but the 49ers won the day. By that time, the turfgrass industry, shocked by the inroads artificial turf had made, had developed new and better ways to construct good natural grass fields.

As Mark Armour wrote, “Within a few years, the new turfs (and the symmetrical concrete stadiums that housed them) were no longer looked upon as progress, but as a sign that the modern world had gone seriously awry. Dick Allen, future horse breeder, remarked, ‘If horses can't eat it, I don't want to play on it.’ Though his wit was typically unique, his sentiments were carrying the day.”

Like Candlestick, Chicago’s Comiskey Park (1976), Kansas City’s Kaufmann Stadium (1995), St. Louis’s Busch Stadium (1996), and Cincinnati’s Cinergy Field (2001) reverted to grass.

Artificial turf is best suited for domed stadiums. Five of those today use synthetic turf: Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay Rays), Rogers Centre (Toronto Blue Jays), Chase Field (Arizona Diamondbacks), Globe Life Field (Texas Rangers), and loanDepot Park (Miami Marlins).

So what’s better: grass or turf? When asked his preference, former Mets and Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw replied, “I dunno. I never smoked any AstroTurf.”

Matt Sieger, now retired, is a former sports reporter and columnist for The Vacaville Reporter. True confession: It’s been almost two years since I wrote my book, The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978, and I just found out that they played on artificial turf that season. This article first appeared in The Sports Column on September 7, 2025.