Goodyear Ballpark (Goodyear, Arizona) was the result of a $108 million dollar construction project that was completed in 2009. The state-of-the-art training facilities and 10,000-seat stadium helped attract the Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds to relocate to Arizona from Florida. In addition to being the spring training home for both MLB teams, the fields are used by the City of Goodyear for tournaments, Little League games and more. In fact, local, regional and national tournaments account for more than 1,500 baseball games played at the ballpark and team complex fields each year. For a behind-the-scenes look at how the operation is managed 365 days per year, SportsField Management recently spoke with Goodyear Ballpark Superintendent Scott Dobbins, CSFM, and Supervisor Andrew Donovan.
SportsField Management (SFM): Can you tell us about Goodyear Ballpark, the complex and fields there, and the overall scope of your duties?
Scott Dobbins, CSFM: We have the Guardians and the Reds here; so we have two separate complexes, but one stadium that is shared between the two teams. So, during spring training, we will have 30 straight games at the stadium – 15 Reds games and 15 Guardians games – which is a little bit of a challenge. Then, each complex has eight fields (the Reds have 8 fields and the Guardians have 8 fields), so we have 17 fields total. We have a supervisor at each location, and I’m the superintendent overseeing the operation. Andrew is the supervisor of the Guardians complex, and Patrick Mejia is the supervisor at the Reds complex. They each have seven full-time groundskeepers. We also have a foreman at the stadium, Tristin Litherland, as well as a mechanic and an irrigation technician. Overall, we have 23 full-time staff to take care of the place; then we supplement quite a bit with part-time help.
SFM: Outside of spring training, what does the rest of the year look like for you in terms of your event loads and what you are hosting?
Andrew Donovan: By January 1 we’re pretty much spring training ready. We’re dialing stuff in at that point, but guys are showing up. Major league players work out here year round. In April, there are rehab players here working out; then, a couple of days later, extended spring training starts. The major league teams take off, all minor league affiliates take off, and you’re left with a group of 30 to 40 guys plus rehab guys. Some guys are from the Dominican Republic, where each team has an academy, and they are here to work out.
Then, after that, it’s another three months of Arizona Complex League rookie ball, and those are night games in May, June and July. August is extended Complex League, so another month of baseball action, then it’s right into fall instructionals for August and September.
There will be camps mixed into that rotation for the team. They’re working out, and they have hitting and pitching camps going on November and December. There are only a couple weeks per year where the teams are off, typically around Thanksgiving and then Christmas to New Year, and that’s it.
Around mid-April they transition to using half the complex because the other half of the complex is utilized for youth tournaments. We have a contract for 14U through 18U tournaments; so, we have youth baseball pretty much Friday through Monday every weekend from Memorial Day through the beginning of October.
There’s also a bit of men’s senior baseball, state playoffs, and community use like Little League mixed in as well. So we’re pretty jam packed from May through the beginning of November with team use, tournaments and community use.
SFM: How many fields do you have operating at any one time?
Donovan: We do three games per day per field for tournaments. For some tournaments there are four games, but we try to limit it to three to save wear and tear on the fields. In the summer, when it’s 110 degrees plus, four games per day on a field eats away at it pretty good. So that’s 24 games per day, just on the minor side. But then all the team activities are happening at the same time; so, we’re not just taking care of the fields for the tournament – we also have to take care of the team needs, and they use at least three fields each daily. We also host graduations for high schools, we have food truck festivals, Halloween events, and other stuff happening at the stadium.
SFM: How do you balance those schedules and coordinate everything to make sure that everything runs smoothly across such a large operation?
Dobbins: Our GM has been here for quite a while, so we work really closely with him. He’s the main driver, and then there is a stadium ops coordinator who takes the calls from the tournament users. They get the schedule put together and then they run it by us to make sure we are good with our staffing, the field usage and whether fields need time off. Our general approach has to be a patient approach, and communicating to get our GM fully involved to understand the big picture. We have a shared calendar that has been really beneficial. You can quickly jump on that calendar, see the events, and sometimes take a deeper dive into specific dates.
SFM: What are the biggest challenges that you face?
Donovan: Trying to grow two types of grass throughout the year is a big challenge with almost year-round use. We have to maneuver around teams, so we overseed in stages. We start in mid-October, and then the last overseed we put down on the fields is almost late November. So there’s a pretty big difference in temperature for us. A sweet spot has been the third week in October; but we start getting into middle of November or the end of November, and it’s a lot colder, so it takes a lot longer to get germination going. We’re always ready for spring, but sometimes it’s a little tight. You just want to be set and ready. The teams have been great; they want a good complex too, so they’re pretty flexible.
SFM: How is communication with the big league clubs handled?
Donovan: Most of that goes through us. Some of the things outside of field usage that are out of our hands will go through the GM and stadium operations. But, for the most part, I talk to all the coaches. It’s pretty much non-stop communication – morning meetings and calls throughout the day – so I feel like we have a really good communication stream. People sometimes don’t realize that we are city employees. They think we are part of the team. So, that’s a good indication of how entwined we are with them, and how things are going.
SFM: How long have you been at the facility, and what has been your career path to get where you are?
Dobbins: I started in Minor League Baseball in 1997, worked in Michigan for a couple years, worked in New York, and then came to Arizona – right into spring training. I worked with the Brewers for nine years and then this is our sixteenth year at Goodyear. Andrew and I both came over during construction and helped when we were building the place. So, I have done 26 Cactus League seasons.
Donovan: I started in 2002, and was at Peoria Sports Complex for the Mariners and Padres for almost five years, and then I went over to Tempe with the Angels for a year. I’m from this side of town, and I knew this place was being built; so, as soon as they had some openings, I put in for it.
SFM: You obviously like it there. What is the best part of the job?
Donovan: I think working for a city has a lot of benefits. We all work hard here, but at the same time, our city really promotes work/life balance. Spring training is a grind – it’s a couple months of just working. But we have the ability to do what we do best, what we love to do, and then still have good benefits and work/life balance. It’s pretty rewarding to be in that situation.
Dobbins: I tell minor league stories to help guys understand how good we have it here. When you are working a 12-game homestand in the minor leagues, and you have three people on your staff total, and you have tarp pulls at 10:00 at night, it’s just a grind. I think you age two years at a time in the minor leagues. Here, we see our families every night and we share the workload across our staff. If we have night events, we split that up and we work different shifts. Working for the city has had some really good benefits over the long haul. We have a pretty nice retirement setup, and some benefits that maybe we wouldn’t have if we were working directly for the teams. But we’re all here because of baseball and working spring training.
SFM: Whenever you are renovating a field, how does that impact your overall schedule and workload?
Dobbins: We rarely ever just shut down. So, we do a couple of fields per year with renovations, and then games are played on the other fields. It affects our tournament load a little bit where they might only have six fields available for a tournament instead of eight.
SFM: I know there’s no such thing as typical, but what does a typical day look like for you?
Donovan: During spring training it kind of turns into Groundhog Day. It’s just the same thing, but it takes a little while because we get a lot of new part-time staff jumping on board right before spring training. The first few weeks are always dialing things in with the new hires and getting them on board. We have a big safety program and a lot of SOPs. But once you get stuff dialed in, it’s just well-oiled machine. I get the schedules the day before from both the minor league and major league guys, and we all meet in the morning to go over the schedules. I divide my crew in half – half to the minor league side, half to the major league side – and float some guys around wherever needed. Sometimes there are six BP setups at one time, so we are rotating around, running around, getting stuff set up. We also work with the coaches – we’re raking during their drills, dragging, setting up if they have minor league games on the same fields. Then, at the end of the day, we’re putting everything to bed, fixing everything, getting stuff prepared for the next day, and getting water going if we have to fertilize. We mow mornings, midday afternoons and where we can fit the mowing schedule in – mowing half the complex every day, so we’re rotating. We do some edging and maintenance, and if we know there will be downtime on a field, we might do some aeration. It’s pick a task and do it.
SFM: Is there anything else you would like to add or anything our readers should know?
Dobbins: Major league teams have their major league stadiums, and minor league teams have their minor league stadiums. There’s no real category for spring training complexes, but we are held to major league standards. We kind of get forgotten; we are in this gray zone.
Donovan: One of the big questions we get is what we do outside of spring training. For me, it feels busier outside of spring training. For spring training, we’re dialed in, and we’re just taking care of the team. Everybody’s on the same page. Outside of that, we have tournaments going on throughout the day. We have three different shifts per day – early shift, midday shift and night shift – so it starts getting more challenging with scheduling. You have more users on the complex because you have different clients – the team, tournaments, etc.; so, outside of spring training it feels a little bit busier. Many people have no idea what happens at these complexes outside of spring training, because they’re labeled as a spring training complex. I like to educate people and let them know what we do year round.
