Derek Schultz: Labor of love

Several job titles in Indianapolis sports come with immense challenges. Ask any sports fan here, and they’d probably mention quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts first, as evidenced by the constant carousel at the position in recent years and tremendous pressure as the most important player on the city’s most-talked-about team. President of the Indiana Pacers is likely another—hello, Kevin Pritchard!—that would come up since that person is tasked with balancing large expectations with small-market limitations, all while navigating the constant unknowns of an NBA landscape that has often been cruel to the so-called little guys.

But there’s another job where one has to deal with pressure (he or she has to create a perfect product every game for 70-plus games), unknowns (Indiana forecasts—ugh!), and challenges (wear and tear, heat, cold, dry, wet, etc.): director of field operations for the Indianapolis Indians.

For nearly the last two decades, Joey Stevenson has met the challenge.

The three-time Sports Turf Manager of the Year has been the Tribe’s “grass man” for nearly two decades, navigating central Indiana’s unpredictable seasons and continually enhancing perhaps the nation’s best minor league ballpark in Victory Field, one of the crown jewels of a city known for its immaculate sports venues.

A Fishers resident and Purdue graduate, Stevenson talked with me about his path as an award-winning groundskeeper, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and all that his unforgiving profession entails:

Can you take me through a day in your life at the ballpark, because I don’t think most people realize the work that goes into making Victory Field look the way it does.

A question we get a lot is, “So, you just show up at, like, 4 p.m., right?” Those same folks are shocked when I tell them we’re here at 9 a.m. for a 7 p.m. game. With the way baseball is now, it’s so much busier. It used to be that batting practice would start around 4 p.m., but now, sometimes we have early hitting that starts as early as 11:30 a.m.

For a typical day, we arrive around 9 a.m. for a 7 p.m. game. We try to use the first several hours to get the field ready for the day. It gets mowed. We make sure the mounds and plates are good to go. We make sure the infield has the right amount of conditioner on it and nail drag [loosening and mixing up the infield surface with a special tool] the infield and add moisture to it—there’s four or five people doing that for over three hours. When the teams arrive, we’re glorified batting practice setter-uppers and get things set for any work that the players are doing on the field. We get the field back at 6 p.m. and spend the last hour on final preparations for the game: dragging, chalking, tearing down batting practice, and one last watering. We also drag [the infield dirt] during the third and sixth innings, and then we’re here about 45 minutes after each game to do repair work and get it ready for the next day.

You originally wanted to be a golf course superintendent. Tell me what led to you getting into baseball and ballparks.

At 15, I started working on a golf course, and that was originally what I was interested in. Early on when I was at Purdue [in the Turf Science program], being a turf manager at a baseball field wasn’t a thing to me, and I didn’t yet realize it was a career. I just thought it was a couple people that chart the line at 6 p.m. and moved on with their day. We took a field trip [to Victory Field], and I was blown away. I enjoy baseball and played in high school and realized that this allowed me to be around the game and be around sports.

I always tell people the really smart kids at Purdue became the golf course superintendents, and the ones who weren’t so smart got into sports.

Are you seeing interest from the younger generation in pursuing this career?

Yeah, I think so. I would say 10 or 15 years ago it might have been difficult to find people, but besides kids in a turf science program, we’ve gone out and hired local university kids. We currently have four or five people on our crew that are sport management majors, and since they started here, they now want to pursue turf, so there’s interest. It’s just about trying to find those kids that felt like I did when I was in high school, and may not have known this was a thing, and give them a chance to experience it in hopes they’ll pursue it down the road.

You mentioned the fact there are degree programs for this stuff—how much science goes into this?

Compared to your home lawn, I don’t want to use steroids as a descriptor for talking baseball, but this is like high-performance grass. Since we got this new field [earlier this year], I told people our old field might have been a Toyota Camry and our new field is like a Formula One car. There’s new technology that’s in it, but everything we do: the depth of our sand root zone, the different watering rates, the soil, the fungicides, the fertilizers—all of it goes back to science.

What is the toughest thing to deal with, extreme heat and dry or extreme wet?

I would say it’s the wet because, from the start of the season to end, we pretty much have to put the tarp on every single time it rains. The rain coupled with the team’s schedule nowadays is super stressful. Players want to do certain work before every game, and when rain gets in the way, suddenly they’re upset. Then the visiting team also wants to do their work, and they’re upset, and everyone’s upset. When it rains, you’re just trying to survive the day sometimes.

This is going to seem like an odd question, but do you have any fields or groundskeepers that inspire you?

The St. Louis Cardinals have the nicest field I’ve ever been on, and I’m good friends with Justin Scott [field operations manager for the Cardinals]. It’s the nicest field in probably the worst growing environment you can have. Everyone in this industry knows who Trevor Vance [senior director of groundskeeping and landscaping for the Royals] is in Kansas City, and I was fortunate enough to get to work with him during the 2006 season. That field [at Kauffman Stadium] was incredible.

It seems like everyone who is with the Indianapolis Indians stays there forever. Has doing something that you love for an organization that people seem to really enjoy being a part of added to your experience there?

Most definitely. I started with them when I was 22 years old, so I was just a kid. [Team President] Randy [Lewandowski], [Assistant General Manager] Matt Guay, [Chair and CEO] Bruce Schumacher and all the people that had been here so long have taught me a lot [since] when I came here in 2007. I think the number one word that comes up with the staff is “family.” At least for me, they make you feel like a family because everyone here plays such a big role in the success, from the grounds crew, to stadium operations, to facilities, to people who sell tickets, sponsorship, marketing, all that stuff—we all work together, and it’s pretty cool.

What’s the coolest experience you’ve ever had because of your job?

I worked for the Phillies for a summer [in 2005], and it was like my second or third day, and [five-time American League stolen base leader] Kenny Lofton was running in the outfield. He asked us if any of us wanted to race, and we were all like, “Heck, no!”

As far as my time with the Indians, I got to see Justin Verlander throw here. I went to New Zealand to visit some friends back in 2016, and I called up the turf manager at Eden Park [a 124-year-old rugby and cricket stadium] and said, “Hey, I’m a turf guy at Victory Field. Can we come visit?” And he opened the doors for us, and here we are walking around Eden Park where the All Blacks play, and it was out of this world. The fact you could call up anyone in the world at a stadium and most of the time they’ll welcome you with open arms to come in and take a tour and check things out is pretty cool.•

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From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting. You can follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @Schultz975.