Blanchette column: The grass is always greener for David Yearout
“You want it to look nice and you know what it takes to make it look nice,” David Yearout confessed. “But when you get home after spending 10 hours on an off-day edging and mowing a baseball field, mowing your own is not something you really want to do.”
Hey, sometimes the contractor’s basement is still unfinished, too – and the sports writer probably still owes his sister a letter.
Occupational hazards.
But within the friendly confines of a ballpark, the groundskeeper’s groupthink settles in, falling somewhere between code and obsession. Buff every blade of grass, massage every pebble. On game days, it means 7 a.m. starts and 11 p.m. quitting time. As it was handed down to Yearout from his earliest days on the rake at Avista Stadium, it comes out something like this: And then some.
The payoff: the perfect canvas for the summer pastime. And, on rare occasions, then some.
Like this: David Yearout, head groundskeeper for the Spokane Indians the past two summers, has been called up to the big leagues – the kind of promotion a Single-A player can only envy.
The 24-year-old Lewis and Clark High School grad leaves Monday for a gig on the grounds crew of the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park – and he figures the walk into the stadium will be every bit the thrill Hollywood has made it out to be in countless baseball movies.
“It’s almost romanticized – the father and son walking through the tunnel together and seeing the expanse of green grass, and the stripes and all the cool patterns,” he said.
Except the player envisions himself blazing across that green for the diving catch that saves extra bases.
The grounds guy envisions himself making it greener.
Not that Yearout ever put limits on his imagination.
“I love baseball,” he said. “Growing up, everybody has their thing – to become an astronaut or a cowboy or whatever. I was going to be a major leaguer. I was thinking (Derek) Jeter will be at shortstop, and I’ll be at second and it’ll be this perfect life.
“It turned out I wasn’t that good at baseball. So I found a way to stay in the game.”
This all started after his freshman year, a Legion coach named Shane Hughes keeping him around after practices and games to help with the field. Hughes was enrolled in Washington State’s turf management program, and extolled for Yearout the virtues and possibilities. It didn’t hurt that Yearout’s aptitudes leaned toward math and science – so subjects like “soil science and plant biology were right up my alley.”
So he wound up at WSU, too, in 2010 – and by the next summer rustled up a job with the Indians.
His guru was Tony Lee, who’s served three different tours as the club’s head groundskeeper – and who was rebuilding the pitcher’s mound at Avista after the Chiefs’ outdoor hockey game there when Yearout arrived for an interview. Eventually, they went into the office, where the décor is early Northwest League Field of the Year Award – 17 in the last 19 years alone.
“As perfect a boss as you can have,” Yearout said.
“The turf degree is kind of a new-age thing. He didn’t have that. He learned by doing. He started as a cook in the Indians’ kitchen, but he’s learned everything there is to know about Avista Stadium – and he not only knew it, but would stop what he was doing to show you the right way.”
And offer the benefits of his connections.
Lee worked with another former Indians head groundskeeper, Chad Mulholland, who worked his way up to run the show for the Miami Marlins. Mulholland’s friendship with the Phillies’ Mike Boekholder – who got his start in Yakima – helped Yearout make the quick jump to the bigs.
But he’ll be back. On July 23, he’s marrying Courtney Biel – a former Avista section leader. Luckily, the date they booked during an Indians road trip matched a Phillies roadie, too. But that will be the extent of their summer travel for quite a while.
Not that he’d have it any other way.
“I can’t imagine ever getting sick of pulling up to work and walking through a tunnel and seeing the light and all those seats and the huge scoreboard,” Yearout said. “No matter where I am, walking into a big empty stadium in the morning will be as good as it gets.”
And then some.