ABOUT THE COLUMNIST
Gracie Bonds Staples is an award-winning journalist who has been writing for daily newspapers since 1979, when she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2000 after stints at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Sacramento Bee, Raleigh Times and two Mississippi dailies. Staples was recently promoted to Senior Features Enterprise Writer. Look for her columns Thursdays and Saturdays in Living and alternating Sundays in Metro.
These being the dog days of summer, Hogan and Rosey are holed up in the office while Chris Ball opens the door to Suite 14 overlooking a glistening green turf at the Gwinnett Braves stadium to speak to a visitor.
Less than 24 hours ago, the field was bustling with activity. Fans cheering one moment, groaning the next. The familiar thwack of bat hitting baseballs. Fielders break-dancing under the hot summer sun.
What could be better than this?
Not much, according to the 38-year-old Ball, vice president of the Sports Turf Managers Association's Georgia chapter. Managing the turf for the Gwinnett Braves is one thing. Managing it with Hogan and Rosey — his best friends — is something akin to, well, heaven.
And what a run they’ve had.
It began, really, long before Hogan and Rosey were born and when Ball was a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he'd gone to play baseball but became a student assistant coach instead.
As fate would have it, Ball became quick friends with the university’s turf manager. What he did with the field of play was fascinating to young Ball. If only he could prepare the field for practice and games like that.
If only …
“I thought what he did was really neat and the way he could manipulate a field was amazing,” he said.
After graduating in 1998 with a degree in public administration, Ball thought he might attend graduate school but took a job as facility manager at UNCG's new stadium so he could remain with his first love, baseball. Eighteen months later, he abandoned the notion of ever getting a master's degree and headed to Harrisburg, Pa., to become head groundskeeper for the Harrisburg Senators, then an affiliate of the Montreal Expos, before finally landing in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
There he had the longest title in Minor League Baseball, enough to fill up two lines on a business card — senior director of ballpark operations and sports turf management — but after 10 years, Chris Ball had established himself as a mover and shaker among sports turf managers.
He also met his second love — Hogan, who has been at Ball’s side since the yellow Lab was 7 weeks old, watching as Ball meticulously prepped the field green, riding shotgun in the utility vehicles, cooling off in the stadium irrigation system.
They have been here in Gwinnett since November 2011, when Ball’s old boss North Johnson summoned him from Myrtle Beach.
Hogan is 11 now and at 130 pounds not nearly as active. Arthritis in his hips and shoulders has slowed his gait, but he’s still the first one out the door most mornings to come to work.
That would make 8-month-old Rosey “the pistol” and Ball’s late sister’s namesake second. Whereas Hogan prefers the air conditioning these days, Rosey, a black Lab, will chase the birds and play fetch for as long as you’ll let her, which isn’t long during hot Georgia summers.
“Her switch is on go all the time,” Ball said. “If we had a packed house of 10,000 people, she’d want to meet every one of them.”
Their day starts early and ends late, but he says maintaining the field is an incredible job, made all the more bearable because he gets to do it with his best friends and get paid.
The threesome, along with about eight crew members, typically arrive at 8:30 a.m. to clean up from the night before, mow the infield, the outfield and foul territory. They clean and repair the bullpen mounds, clean and wash the dugout, groom the infield clay, water it, and repaint the foul lines.
Sometime around 1 p.m., Hogan and Rosey retreat to Ball’s office, near the right field corner.
It’s hard to feel sorry for them. The Labs’ field of play is one of the biggest yards in Gwinnett County. They can roam and sniff around for two and a half acres without ever running out of space, which makes them two of the luckiest dogs around.
Ball is pretty lucky, too.
Most of us have a collection of acquaintances we call friends: neighbors, co-workers, fellow sports fans. A true friend, though, is a rare and mysterious gift.
If you have one, historian Thomas Fuller once said, you have more than your share.
Chris Ball has two.
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