When you look at it on the surface, it seems insane. Nobody likes missing out on a baseball game due to a rain-out. That’s why Gerry Peterson and his staff at the local baseball stadium in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada, decided to take matters into their own hands and dry the field out themselves by coating the baseball diamond in diesel fuel and lighting it on fire. Now, the field is deemed unusable and teams are banned from playing out the rest of their baseball season.
“What usually takes a day, day and a half for Mother Nature to take care of, we did in half an hour,” Peterson said. “If I thought for a second it was hurting a kid, I never would have done it.” Behold, the power of fire!
Apparently, though I’ve never seen this in person or even heard of it, lighting the field on fire and burning off excess water is an old groundskeeper’s trick. Gerry’s mistake was when his diesel fuel got on the pitcher’s mount. That caused the contamination, and apparently, is bad enough that the town feels forced to call off the season. Sad for the kids, especially since just how harmful can diesel be considering it’s so widely in use?
Tags: St. Albert, Alberta, Canada, Gerry Peterson, baseball diamond lit on fire to dry it, unusual drying methods, teams banned from playing baseball after field set on fire, diesel fuel fire used to dry baseball diamond
