Reading Fightins’ Sports Turf Manager Arouses all Sorts of Suspicion for Winning Sports Turf Managing Award

The Reading Fightin Phils are in the middle of answering piles of hate mail and explaining what in god’s name an ostrich is doing here.

I know an ostrich-chewed lawn when I see one. [c/o News 11 Sports]Naturally, whether we are consumed with hate or not, we have to involve ourselves in this.

It’s marketing 101 that the Fightins will be unleashing a salvo of PR schemes to distract us from the real story, their betrayal or whatever.  I never voted to change them from the R-Phils to the R-Fightins.  Why should it be my double-A affiliate’s name?!

So, give it your best shot, Fightins, and we’ll see if you can penetrate our mighty resolvehey look they won an award.  What? No I don’t know what it’s for yet.  I didn’t get that far.  It’s an award, who cares what it’s for!  It’s AMAZING!  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN YOUR 2012 AWARD-WINNING READING FIGHTIN PHILS HA HA HA HA HA YEAH!

It’s been proven by research that a stadium’s turf plays a huge role in a team’s success.

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In all seriousness, keeping a facility’s grounds intact is no simple task.  What’s your job?  Sitting at a desk?  Delivering crap?  Serving and protecting the people of the city?  Get out of here.

But as far as a baseball team goes, the grounds crew can often be overlooked.  Fans are more enamored by what’s happening on the field than what’s happening to it.  Nobody runs onto the field just to roll around on the grass and smell it and appreciate it.  They just want to touch the players or feel up the players or stare one of the better players in the eye and chant your name so that when they’re famous they’ll never be able to forget you because they can’t escape the weird memory.

It’s for this and far less reasons that people should be more aware of guys like Dan Douglas of the Reading Fightins, who was voted Sports Turf Manager of the Year by Sports Turf Manager Association.  He gets to accept it in Nashville, Tennessee at the Winter Meetings, a process he is vastly familiar with after receiving this same exact award in 2009.  It’s a tradition the Phillies farm system considers a top priority, as single-A Clearwater’s Opie Cheek has won it for the Florida State League every year since 2004.

So, what’s Douglas’ secret?  Ostriches?  Ostriches are known to eat grass, seeds, roots, and even swallow rocks–all the things that keep a field tidy and well manicured.  Douglas takes home another Turf Award, the same year his franchise changes its logo to feature an ostrich, while working for a Major League affiliate who prides its farm system in maintaining pristinely managed facilities?!  This is rank with conspiracy!

We will get to the bottom of this scandal, barring any further news of any kind about anything.