WRITTEN BY: Luke Yoder

When DuraEdge Engineered Infield Mix is properly installed it has been proven to improve safety, consistency, playability, and help to mitigate costly rainouts. It will also decrease maintenance moving forward because of its ability to eliminate migration and deliver quicker re-entry following rain events with less conditioner required.   

Traditional infield mixes can have migration issues due to rain, wind, dragging, and from player impact. Migration from rain can cause gully washers that leave voids in the profile and cause material to end up in the grass edges, creating a lip. After these rain events, additional infield material and labor is required to fill the voids. The migrated material that ends up in the grass is extremely difficult to remove and inevitably builds up a lip that is dangerous. This lip will prevent water from shedding off the surface properly. Groundskeepers and Coaches that maintain surfaces with migration issues spend a huge amount of time working their infields to become playable after a rain event due to washed out material. Migration of material due to position players occurs on all surfaces, but is greatly reduced on a DuraEdge infield surface. On a typical non-engineered infield, position areas become chewed up and form a low area within the first month of the season. Once this happens, moisture management becomes more challenging and playing after a rain event takes much more time and effort. Who else has struggled with “bird baths” created from the migration? The fact that DuraEdge stays in place longer and reduces the need to add material or move material around, helps tremendously to maintain surface-grade. Less migration also equates to reduced cost and time spent on maintenance cycles. A common practice we see is dumping a 25 ton load onto the infield surface each year to bring the grade back up. When this practice of adding 25 tons each year is repeated, it not only takes more work and funding, but the infield area essentially becomes a plateau and the transition from the infield to the outfield becomes a serious safety issue. Often times this is approved by the owner and performed by a non-certified sports field contractor who is unfortunately unaware they are contributing to a bigger problem down the road. When this occurs, a serious cost is unavoidable that involves removing huge amounts of costly material, removing the lip, and essentially starting over. When a DuraEdge surface is installed correctly, the end user can get by with a couple of tons/year of infield material for edge work and some position area touch up. The need for additional material is greatly reduced as well as yearly grading.     

Playing the game of baseball or softball in the rain does not happen as much as some sports. The idea is to have your infield surface become playable as quickly as possible after a significant rain event. A DuraEdge surface can be playable six hours after a measurable rain event with very little maintenance or investment in drying agent, if properly installed. Typical non-engineered infields require a significant amount of work after a rain event to attempt to dry out the surface. This is usually performed by opening up the top surface, applying conditioner, dragging conditioner in, and in some cases, repeating the process until the surface is deemed playable. When this technique is performed on a repetitive basis, the integrity of the infield profile is compromised due to incorporating an excess amount of conditioner in the upper half of the infield. Grade is also compromised when the surface is worked to deep. Another common practice is to squeegee or push water out of low areas with a broom to try and get the surface playable. This will also make problems worse overtime, making low spots deeper and increasing time for the infield to become playable. DuraEdge stays firm, and when graded properly, the water will shed off the surface without taking material into the edge. All that’s required within those six hours is a light drag or sweep which will turn over the conditioner on the top and become playable much quicker without investing in a substantial amount of conditioner. 

Consistency and improved playability is possible with a DuraEdge Engineered Infield Mix. Once the surface is installed to proper grade (.5%-1%), moisture management becomes easier, increasing performance and reducing maintenance. When a DuraEdge infield profile has consistent moisture throughout and is properly compressed, the “cork board” effect comes into play.

This is when you can insert a key or a knife into your profile easily and cleanly without material breaking apart or “chipping” out. This simulates a player’s cleat or spike and leaves cleat marks instead of foot marks or small potholes which would cause a bad hop. It also creates a surface that has that corky feel when you press your thumb into it–proper moisture will allow you to leave a small indentation. When you have those consistent playing conditions, you will see that each time the ball hits the surface, even with top spin, it will check up instead of appearing to speed up when the ball goes from grass to dirt. More importantly, the ball will take a consistent hop. When the ball hits a cleat mark instead of a pothole, the ball will stay true. When a DuraEdge infield surface becomes hard due to lack of proper moisture, the ball will take a quicker bounce but will not take an erratic hop. Typical harvested/non-engineered infield materials do tend to chunk out and break up more as the game is played, causing inconsistency and those undesirable hops.  

So why does DuraEdge have these qualities compared to other materials? Most harvested infield mixes do not have that proper balance of sand, silt, and clay. Reduced pore space in a DuraEdge infield surface holds onto moisture longer than an infield material that does not have the correct ratios of sand, silt, and clay. Additionally, the unique mineralogy of clay that comes with a DuraEdge infield surface reacts to water differently by holding moisture longer and becoming playable faster. Proper Silt:Clay ratios are essential for proper infield surfaces along with the proper type of sand. DuraEdge is the only infield material that has this unique clay and the same specification of sand blended in each time.  

DuraEdge infield material compares to no other because it is designed and engineered specifically for baseball and softball, every batch consistent no matter what field it ends up on across the country. DuraEdge first introduced this innovation to MLB in 2005. Today there are 25 MLB teams, over 100 MiLB, over 100 D1 and many more fields, from high schools to parks, who have seen the return on investment by installed DuraEdge.