Blue Jays pave way for grass at the Rogers Centre

You may notice a slightly more charcoal hue to the artificial turf and a few sharper bounces in the outfield at the Rogers Centre this season.

But whats darker on the eyes is actually softer on the knees. The darker shade and livelier playing surface are the result of changes made by the Rogers Centres grounds crew to extend the turfs lifespan.

Underneath the polypropylene blades of grass think garbage-bag material is an infill of black rubber beads, which are about the size of coarse coffee grounds.

Previously, that infill was a combination of sand and rubber, which, in the four years that the current turf has been in place, had grown hard and compact from the compression that occurs whenever the turf is rolled up and not in use. The sand particles had settled at the bottom, while the rubber bits deteriorated to the size of pepper grains.

It created a very hard field, said Kelly Keyes, vice-president of building services for the Blue Jays.

By the end of last season, Keyes and her crew knew they needed to make a change.

So this off-season the grounds crew, led by Keyes and head groundskeeper Tom Farrell, painstakingly tamped out all of the turfs old infill and replaced it with a fresh all-rubber infill, doing away with the sand mixture. Hence the black streaks and puffs of what look like little black clouds when an outfielder dives on the turf or a ball skips hard on the surface.

Infielder Maicer Izturis said he noticed the difference right away.

Absolutely, its a little softer this year, he said earlier this month, before suffering a knee injury in Baltimore. But the ball jumps a little bit more, too.

But this years improvements are just a stop-gap, a means of squeezing another season out of the current field before purchasing a new AstroTurf field for next season, which will bridge the gap before natural grass is installed by opening day in 2018.

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Blue Jays pave way for grass at the Rogers Centre