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| Heather Nabozny: The first female head groundskeeper (right) in Major League Baseball, gets help preparing the infield for last year's World
Series at Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers. Jason Bean/CSM/file |
She's in charge of the Tigers' turf
Being head groundskeeper for a Major League Baseball stadium involves much more than just mowing the grass.
from the July 10, 2007 edition
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Ms. Nabozny grew up in Brighton, Mich. As a kid, she worked at her dad's lawn-care company, which is where she first fell in love with grass. At the age of 10, she mowed the family's lawn with a tractor.
Yet it was a lawn-care seminar she attended with her dad that got her seriously thinking about taking care of sports fields for a profession. "I said, 'Wow! They have a school for this?' " she recalls. Years later, she graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in sports turf management.
Like professional ballplayers and umpires, groundskeepers must work their way up to the majors from the minors. Ms. Nabozny's first job in baseball was in Dunedin, Fla., where the Toronto Blue Jays spring training facility is located. She worked five years at a minor league ballpark in Michigan before joining the Tigers' staff in 1999.
She says that to be a good groundskeeper you must be organized and detail-oriented – and it helps to do well in science and math.
She encourages kids to try it. "Get a summer job mowing lawns or working at a golf course," she suggests. That way, you'll know if you enjoy the work.
The best part of her job is "when the team wins," of course. But she also enjoys arriving at the ballpark in the early morning, "when it's quiet," to begin a day's work.
But when the umpire yells, "Play ball!" she doesn't watch the game – she watches how the ball bounces and how the players' cleats move in the dirt!
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