By Kris Koberg, CEO of DICA
As the Iowa Cubs, the AAA affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, prepared to host their Spring into Summer Concert Series in May, a major question loomed for the team’s operations crew — how to deliver the concert’s stage, loaded aboard an 18-wheel semi, across the team’s playing surface.
Complicating any plans were the renovations that Principal Park, the home of the Iowa Cubs, had undergone last fall. Following the conclusion of the 2024 season, the Cubs had replaced their field.
“Whether it’s new or old, we would still want to protect it to the fullest extent that we possibly could,” said Iowa Cubs President and General Manager Sam Bernabe. “But it was even more important to protect it because it’s a young field — it hadn’t matured much yet at that point, by virtue of only being really grown in over a couple of month period. So, it was even more vulnerable.”
With a 27-ton load set to travel from the park’s center field entrance to the third base line, Bernabe and the staff at Bobby Baker Entertainment, the event management company coordinating operations for the concert series, sought out ground protection solutions that could keep the new playing field in the best condition possible. Following the concert series, regular baseball action was set to resume just several days later.
“At first, they were talking about doubling up 3/4-inch plywood, but there’s a cost to that,” said Jason Brown, owner and event producer of Bobby Baker Entertainment. “Not just financially — the plywood is going to degrade, it’s going to splinter, and as it does that, it’s going to start taking gouges out of the grass underneath and leaving debris.”
When one of Brown’s employees came across a demo of a DICA ground protection product online and sent it to him, Brown called DICA , provided the details of their situation, and was recommended MaxiTrack Interlocking Mats. While a layer of plywood under the MaxiTrack remained a part of their plans as the haul approached (out of an abundance of caution), Brown says that once he saw how the MaxiTrack was performing, the crew on site pivoted their approach.
“I mean, this is turf that is literally turning green for the first time, it hasn’t even had a full year of compaction, we’re going to have a very cautious approach,” said Brown. “But we got to a point where we eliminated the plywood entirely and were running the truck and trailer on nothing but the MaxiTrack and seeing even better results.”
With 100 mats on hand, the on-site crew made up of Iowa Cubs grounds crew and summer interns along with Brown’s staff put MaxiTrack to work in a leapfrogging assembly line of sorts. As the truck drove across the field, the crew assembled a roadway in front of the truck as it disassembled the path behind it, a process made possible by MaxiTrack’s blend of strength and easy-to-handle build.
As the haul unfolded, Bernabe monitored how the field held up. With no visual indication of the stage having crossed the field at all, he said that he and his team are more likely to hold similar events in the future.
“Any event we do that’s not baseball related, there’s always a decision that’s hard to make, and it’s how much damage the field is going to take,” said Bernabe. “If we can prevent that damage and excess cost from happening, then it makes the viability of a non-game day event even more prevalent.
“The next time we do it, will definitely use MaxiTrack as well as adjusting some of the other precautions that we took,” he added.
[Editor’s Note: Article provided by DICA]
