Diamond Maintenance

Pitching Mound & Batters Box Repairs

Each team is responsible to repair the pitching mounds and batters boxes following each practice and game. These areas take the most abuse on a ball diamond and must be repaired on a daily basis.

At each diamond, a storage box is provided and will contain the material needed to complete the repairs. In each storage box is bagged clay, steel rake, broom, water can, tamper, plastic bags and a blue barrel with water. 

The following step by step information and video link is provided to ensure each team understands how to repair the areas correctly.

1. Remove the loose shale or crusher dust from the areas to be repaired
2. Sweep the holes out so that you hit the firm existing clay
3. Add a small amount of water to the hole; ( do not pool water in these holes, or else you will need to wait)
4. Add bagged clay to the hole(s) to be repaired
5. Tamp the clay in to the hole, and compact using the handle end of the shovel; add more bagged clay as required
6. Place a plastic bag over the clay, and tamp the area with the tamper. The plastic bag will prevent the clay from sticking to the tamper.
7. Place loose shale or crusher dust over top of the repaired area that was removed in step 1
8. Cover the mound with the tarp and place tires on the mound to prevent tarp from blowing away.

It is worthwhile watching the video link to gain a further understanding of the process: https://youtu.be/vfJxFwtsk6s

Building a Pitching Mound

Below is a great resource to lead you through the steps of properly building a pitching mound from scratch.  You can also use this description to repair mounds as well.

https://www.turface.com/education/resource-library/how-construct-pitchers-mound