(BEIJING, August 20) -- It is tough to be Murray Cook.
Cook, president of Brickman Sports Turf, has created hundreds of ballparks including Olympic baseball fields for the 2000 Sydney Summer Games and 2004 Athens Summer Games, as well as Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros and currently working on the new infield for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball.
With the eye of a surgeon, Cook is enthusiastically praising the delivery of the Wukesong Baseball Field to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and competition at the current Good Luck Beijing sport events.
Both baseball stadiums are, according to Cook, "about 75 percent of where we need to be during the Olympic Games. We have a lot of details that we need to tighten up that the fans will never see, but we will know. These touches will make the Wukesong Baseball Fields even prettier than they are right now."
"In my 15 years of playing in the Major Leagues, these are the best baseball fields I have ever seen. They infield is as good as anything that I pitched on during the Major Leagues," said Bruce Hurst, pitching coach for the Chinese National Baseball Team and former starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.
"Our Chinese players love playing here and it is a first-class facility."
Due to the bitterly cold winters and warm summer months in Beijing, designers elected to use local Shanghai plantings 鈥?3,000 bushels used for both fields. Transplanted from a farm in Shanghai, the grass can be easily planted and needs only a moderate amount of lawn grass care, maintenance and mowing. Cook said that with the expected sub-zero cold temperatures expected in Beijing this winter, both fields will have to be torn out after and re-planted in the spring to be ready for the Games.
Red clay, mixed with soil covers the pitcher's mound, home plate and the remainder of the infield. To the novice, the infield sparkles next to the deep green Bermuda grass. But to Cook, two to three inches of the infield will be removed and sifted to remove even the smallest pepple.
Cook rates both fields as good as - or better - than any of the 400+ NCAA colleges in America and will be perfect in August 2008.
"These baseball fields represent the beauty of what Chinese baseball can be," said Hurst, adding that when fans and media come into the ballparks in August 2008, the field of green and infield of red "will take their breath away and will be a terrific atmosphere for Olympic Baseball."
