Grass is great.
It can tell you the direction of the wind.
It provides somewhere good for a golf ball to land.
It can be a bed, a playground, a hobby or, if you are not careful, a lingering stains that no man-made compound can trump.
Grass absorbs, beautifies, helps the ozone and makes for better picnics.
Nature honed her genius on grass. No other plant delivers a comparably sophisticated root system for the size of the above-ground product.
But grass also frames our dreams. It takes athletic workplaces and makes them dreamscapes: Yankee Stadium, Old Trafford the home of Manchester United, Augusta National and now, in its own way, BMO Field.
Toronto FC play their first home game against the Philadelphia Union Thursday and for the first time football will be played the way supporters and team officials agree it should be.
“It’s about the game,” said Paul Beirne, Toronto FC’s Director of Business Operations.
“You play with air in the ball, you play with 11 men, you play for 90 minutes and you play on grass.”
Using the roughest of calculations, you can count on about 2.3 million grass plants at BMO. That accounts for somewhere between 10 and 15 million blades of grass, although to be fair I did not count.
Think about that for a moment. Take every man woman and child in the GTA and Golden Horseshoe. That includes Barrie, Oshawa, Whitby, Hamilton, Burlington, Mississauga and the Big Smoke. Each of you has two blades of grass at BMO field and you can throw your dogs in too.
Of course, this is not just any grass, rife with weeds and ant hills, bumps and potholes. Imagine a living carpet of Kentucky Bluegrass, fed by miles of underwater tubing to siphon away water and pump in nutrients. The pitch can be brought to the perfect moisture level and heated to keep the plants alive through the winter. The presence of the grass should lower the temperature on the floor of the stadium by more than 10 degrees Celsius on the hottest days.
Beirne says BMO field will be treated with the respect it deserves.
“We have a few obligations we will meet to the letter, but for the most part, this grass will be hallowed ground. It will be used when Toronto FC plays. We have another field for practice“
Beirne himself did not set foot on it until a few days before the opener.
Traditionally, grass brings refuge. For dad, cutting the lawn with an obnoxious gas eating motor has brought sweet release from the demands of work and family.
“You see it changing now but the lawn has always been the men’s domain while the women take care of the gardening,” said Glenn Martin, Director of Marketing for Scotts Canada, the fertilizer company that feeds the lawn.
“Women cooked, men barbecued. But as single women more often become homeowners, lawn care becomes more of a priority.”
Fair enough. Grass belongs to all of us who see cathedrals where others see only a field.
