Shine on you crazy diamond: Ode to the man who kept Munson Stadium grounds immaculate

CANTON — Sept. 11, 2004 was a strange night in the history of Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium.

The City of Canton was exploring possible uses for the then-15-year-old ballpark that had lost its minor-league baseball team.

Rock group Bowling For Soup came in for a Saturday concert. The night began with Hulk Hogan introducing the warmup act, his daughter, singer Brooke Hogan.

The stage was on the baseball diamond, but field access, priced at a premium, had not sold as well as grandstand seats. When Bowling For Soup came on, someone from the band announced, "You people up there ... get on down here!" They didn't have to be asked twice. The field was wall-to-wall revelers by the time the band played its hit, "1985.".

"It wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't rained the night before," Kevan Lindsey said.

Lindsay didn't know Bartolo Colon from Antonio Banderas when he first worked at Munson Stadium.

He grew up on Canton's northeast side and matriculated through Timken High School caring little for baseball. His first job with the Canton Recreation Department was picking rocks off the Willig Park softball fields.

As Lindsey's responsibilities grew to include working on Shanafelt, Cook and other Canton fields, he began to enjoy making a diamond shine. Eventually he became known as the groundskeeper who kept the Munson Stadium field pristine.

Colon and Richie Sexson were hot baseball prospects when Lindsey first showed up in 1995, Munson Stadium's seventh season, near the end of Canton's run as Cleveland's Class AA farm affiliate.

The minor league team's players were controlled by Cleveland, but the franchise was owned separately by an East Coast carpetbagger named Mike Agganis. Agganis had talked Akron into building him a stadium where he could increase his profits.

"Agganis had a groundskeeper who he paid," Lindsey said. "That groundskeeper would call and ask the Recreation Department to send somebody down to help him at Munson. We'd go down.

"The groundskeeper would be in an office in a suit and tie, making sales calls. We asked, 'Why are you doing this?' He said, 'They're making me.'"

Before long, Lindsey became de facto head groundskeeper as the lame-duck minor league team played on.

"Agganis would hire groundskeepers and they wouldn't last a year," Lindsey said. "He wasn't my boss. I was paid by the Recreation Department."

Since Agganis was breaking a 10-year lease by bolting after eight seasons, he had to pay Canton a settlement. Canton used the money to redo the Munson field.

Amid hurry-up construction in 1988 and '89, the outfield was graded improperly, leading to drainage and sight-line problems. Over time, a sink-hole affect was such that the center fielder, in some spots, couldn't see the entire body of the man standing in the batter's box.

Distrusting Agganis, Canton used its own people to take over field upkeep while the Double-A team played out the string. When the city billed Agganis for its services, Agganis sued.

"I had one interaction with Agganis," Lindsey said. "One time he told me, 'I'm supposed to be paying the city for a professional groundskeeper, and you are not a professional groundskeeper. You're not even here full-time because you have other duties with the city.

"So I'm suing the city to not pay you. Everyone thinks you're doing a wonderful job, and we have no complaints. It's about money, and if I can get out of paying for you, I will. No hard feelings.'"

Bob Patt was a City of Canton administrator who dealt with Agganis during the minor league team's eight-year run. Patt got involved with redoing the field, working with Murray Cook, a groundskeeper linked the the Gateway project that installed the field first used in 1994 by Cleveland at Jacobs Field.

Murray became part of the team that redid the Munson Stadium field. Along the way, Lindsey got a major-league education. He was turned loose to maintain the redone field at Munson.

"Kevan became the epitome of a groundskeeper," Patt said. "He was so good at it."

Everybody raved about the Munson field. Everybody knew the field guy was Kevan. Probably, more people knew his nickname, "The Field Nazi," than knew his last name.

He was protective of that diamond, before and after Bowling For Soup night, which stands as the stadium's only concert..

Lindsey didn't do it alone, except for when he did as the maintenance budget shrank. For 10 years, the Ohio Men's Senior Baseball League maintained the field, often using Lindsey.

A second field was added at Munson in 2014. This year, both fields were covered with artificial turf. No groundskeeper is needed to maintain the grass.

"I spent a lot of time down there," said Lindsey, still employed by the Canton Recreation Department with duties away from Munson. "It was sort of like meditation ... concentrating on one field ... nice green grass.

"It was like home."

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Grass at Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium had star groundskeeper