Tigers’ Spring Training Brings Hope, Excitement and a New Turf Field

Despite professional baseball’s slow embrace of artificial turf, the Detroit Tigers set a new Spring Training standard this year by installing FieldTurf at Ty Cobb Field, the practice facility at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Fla.

In doing so, the Tigers join their Grapefruit League rival, the Toronto Blue Jays in incorporating artificial turf, also a FieldTurf surface, into their Spring Training regimen. The conversion from natural grass to artificial was completed on time for the start of camp.

FieldTurf's DoublePlay Classic system is designed specifically for baseball and replicates the characteristics of natural grass. The system features ultra durable, yet soft fibers as well as FieldTurf’s patented silica sand and SBR rubber infill for familiar and proven performance.

The Tigers, who have been training in Lakeland every spring since 1934, have called Joker Marchant Stadium home for 50 years. Ty Cobb Field, named after the Hall of Famer who spent 22 years with the Tigers from 1905 to 1926 as both a player and a manager, is a utility field located just beyond the stadium’s right-field fence.

Because players primarily use it for batting practice, plyometrics, running exercises and drills, the team requires the surface to react to functional activities in the same ways as grass. FieldTurf DoublePlay Classic meets the Tigers’ needs with a softer feel that plays like the real deal.

Ty Cobb Field features rust-colored turf on the base paths to represent clay, while real clay maintained by the Tigers grounds crew around each base ensures game-like sliding conditions.

The DoublePlay Classic system has been installed at more than 40 NCAA Division I facilities and over 300 baseball & softball fields nationwide.

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