Editing Artificial turf (section)

===Baseball===
[[File:Tropicana field.jpg|thumb|right|[[Tropicana Field]] with its artificial turf field.]]
[[File:Sunset HS artificial-turf baseball field - Beaverton, Oregon (2016).jpg|thumb|right|An artificial-turf field at a high school in Oregon.]]
Artificial turf was first used in [[Major League Baseball]] in the Houston [[Astrodome]] in 1966, replacing the grass field used when the stadium opened a year earlier. Even though the grass was specifically bred for indoor use, the dome's semi-transparent [[Lucite]] ceiling panels, which had been painted white to cut down on glare that bothered the players, did not pass enough sunlight to support the grass. For most of the [[1965 Houston Astros season|1965 season]], the [[Astros]] played on green-painted dirt and dead grass.

The solution was to install a new type of artificial grass on the field, ChemGrass, which became known as AstroTurf. Given its early use, the term ''astroturf'' has since been [[genericized]] as a term for any artificial turf.<ref>{{cite web |title=Definition of Astroturf – Dictionary.com |url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/astroturf |website=dictionary.com |access-date=May 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230418021406/https://www.dictionary.com/browse/astroturf |archive-date=April 18, 2023|quote=This sense of the word has come to be frequently used as a generic term for any artificial turf (in the same way that other brand names have been genericized, such as xerox). When used this way, it’s often seen in lowercase (astroturf).}}</ref> Because the supply of AstroTurf was still low, only a limited amount was available for the first home game. There was not enough for the entire outfield, but there was enough to cover the traditional grass portion of the infield. The outfield remained painted dirt until after the [[1966 Major League Baseball All-Star Game|All-Star Break]]. The team was sent on an extended road trip before the break, and on July 19, 1966, the installation of the outfield portion of AstroTurf was completed.

The [[Chicago White Sox]] became the first team to install artificial turf in an outdoor stadium, as they used it only in the infield and adjacent foul territory at [[Comiskey Park]] from 1969 through 1975.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1969/04/16/page/77/article/sox-home-opener-today-horlen-to-start|title=Chicago Tribune – Historical Newspapers|website=Archives.chicagotribune.com|access-date=August 1, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161105133126/http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1969/04/16/page/77/article/sox-home-opener-today-horlen-to-start/|archive-date=November 5, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> Artificial turf was later installed in other new [[multi-purpose stadium]]s such as Pittsburgh's [[Three Rivers Stadium]], Philadelphia's [[Veterans Stadium]], and Cincinnati's [[Riverfront Stadium]]. Early AstroTurf baseball fields used the traditional all-dirt path, but starting in 1970 with Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/throwback-thursday-cincinnatis-riverfront-stadium-and-the-era-of-multipurpose-mistakes/ |title=Throwback Thursday: Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium and the Era of Multipurpose Mistakes |last=Moore |first=Jack |date=July 2, 2015 |website=vice.com |publisher=Vice |access-date=April 13, 2023 |quote=It was the first stadium to include dirt sliding pits around each base, something that has become standard in every turf baseball field built since.}}</ref> teams began using the "base cutout" layout on the diamond, with the only dirt being on the pitcher's mound, batter's circle, and in a five-sided diamond-shaped "sliding box" around each base. With this layout, a painted arc would indicate where the edge of the outfield grass would normally be, to assist fielders in positioning themselves properly. The last stadium in MLB to use this configuration was [[Rogers Centre]] in Toronto, when they switched to an all-dirt infield (but keeping the artificial turf) for the 2016 season.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mlb.com/news/blue-jays-adding-dirt-infield-at-rogers-centre-c164164706 |title=Blue Jays adding dirt infield at Rogers Centre |date=February 10, 2016 |website=MLB.com |access-date=August 1, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107023132/http://m.mlb.com/news/article/164164706/blue-jays-adding-dirt-infield-at-rogers-centre/ |archive-date=November 7, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thestar.com/sports/bluejays/2016/02/11/blue-jays-begin-work-on-all-dirt-infield-at-rogers-centre.html|title = Blue Jays begin work on all-dirt infield at Rogers Centre|website = [[Toronto Star]]|date = February 11, 2016}}</ref>

[[File:Joe Austin Park Qns 35 - Resurfacing.jpg|thumb|right|Artificial turf being installed on a baseball field in Queens, New York City.]]
The biggest difference in play on artificial turf was that the ball bounced higher than on real grass and also traveled faster, causing infielders to play farther back than they would normally so that they would have sufficient time to react. The ball also had a truer bounce than on grass so that on long throws fielders could deliberately bounce the ball in front of the player they were throwing to, with the certainty that it would travel in a straight line and not be deflected to the right or left. The biggest impact on the game of "turf", as it came to be called, was on the bodies of the players. The artificial surface, which was generally placed over a concrete base, had much less give to it than a traditional dirt and grass field did, which caused more wear-and-tear on knees, ankles, feet, and the lower back, possibly even shortening the careers of those players who played a significant portion of their games on artificial surfaces. Players also complained that the turf was much hotter than grass, sometimes causing the metal spikes to burn their feet or plastic ones to melt. These factors eventually provoked a number of stadiums, such as the [[Kansas City Royals]]' [[Kauffman Stadium]], to switch from artificial turf back to natural grass.

In 2000, St. Petersburg's [[Tropicana Field]] became the first MLB field to use a third-generation artificial surface, [[FieldTurf]]. All other remaining artificial turf stadiums were either converted to third-generation surfaces or were replaced entirely by new natural grass stadiums. In a span of 13 years, between 1992 and 2005, the [[National League (baseball)|National League]] went from having half of its teams using artificial turf to all of them playing on natural grass. With the replacement of Minneapolis's [[Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome]] by [[Target Field]] in 2010, only two MLB stadiums used artificial turf from 2010 through 2018: Tropicana Field and Toronto's Rogers Centre. This number grew to three when the Arizona Diamondbacks switched [[Chase Field]] to artificial turf for the 2019 season; the stadium had grass from its opening in 1998 until 2018, but the difficulty of maintaining the grass in the stadium, which has a retractable roof and is located in a desert city, was cited as the reason for the switch.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/mlb/diamondbacks/2018/10/12/arizona-diamondbacks-installing-synthetic-grass-chase-field-2019/1614391002/ |title=Arizona Diamondbacks installing synthetic grass at Chase Field  |date=October 12, 2018 |website=azcentral.com |access-date=October 13, 2018}}</ref> In 2020, Miami's [[Marlins Park]] (now loanDepot Park) also switched to artificial turf for similar reasons, while the Texas Rangers' new [[Globe Life Field]] was opened with an artificial surface, as it is also a retractable roof ballpark in a hot weather city; this puts the number of teams using synthetic turf in MLB at five as of 2023.