Dayton Dragons groundskeeper has dog for assistant
Fifth Third Field groundskeeper Britt Barry’s dog, Cooper, gets a drink from the hose during watering time at the stadium in Dayton, Ohio. Cooper is at home all around the stadium, hangs out in the office and has various chores, such as chasing geese.
Fifth Third Field groundskeeper Britt Barry and his dog, Cooper
DAYTON, Ohio – The Dayton Dragons have a star this season who is faster than Billy Hamilton, more acrobatic than Ozzie Smith, and who certainly wears the “Doggie” tag better than the so-nicknamed Cincinnati Reds Hall of Famer Tony Perez ever did.
His name is Cooper.
He’s a 3-year-old blue heeler – also known as an Australian Cattle Dog – who is the constant sidekick of Dragons’ groundskeeper Britt Barry.
The two leave their Xenia home early each morning in Barry’s jacked-up, big-tired, white Chevrolet pickup truck, and once they get to Fifth Third Field, Cooper hops out and bounds joyously across the outfield grass, ready for another day at the ballpark.
While he can put on a show leaping and twisting in midair to catch the most far-flung Frisbee, Cooper’s also just as happy riding calmly next to Barry on the front seat of the grounds crew’s four-wheel utility vehicle as the pair go about their chores.
When Barry or assistant Nate Koch drags out the heavy-duty hose to water around the mound, Cooper may pick up the brass nozzle and bring it to them. Other times he might carry out a hammer and nails for the tarp or the dig-out tool for the bases.
As for the often-messy Canada Geese, which some years back damaged the grass at Fifth Third, they simply fly on by now rather than risk being caught in a canine rundown.
Maybe best of all, Cooper practices what he barkingly preaches. When it’s time for a bathroom break, he makes sure Barry takes him outside the ballpark to do his business.
The same could not be said for another fabled dog in the Reds organization.
When the late Marge Schott owned the big-league club in Cincinnati, she always was accompanied by her do-as-they want Saint Bernards, first Schottzie and later Schottzie 02, both of whom were given free rein of Riverfront Stadium.
In response, they often turned the playing field into their own personal fire hydrant – and worse.
Hall of Fame second baseman Barry Larkin has a story about diving into second base at the start of one game and ending up with more than mud stains on his uniform.
And that’s not the only Schottzie souvenir that ended up on Reds’ jerseys.
Before the first game of the 1990 World Series, I remember standing in the Reds dugout next to manager Lou Piniella when Marge came up and gave him some of Schottzie’s hair to rub on his shirt for good luck.
Piniella rolled his eyes, but the Reds went on to sweep the favored Oakland A’s four games straight.
Dragons manager Jose Nieves need not worry about any of that from Cooper, who is neither the showpiece of an eccentric owner, nor even the team mascot like Hank the Ballpark Pup, the abandoned Bichon Frise mix that wandered into the Milwaukee Brewers spring training camp in Arizona two years ago and was lovingly adopted by the team.
Cooper is simply the come-to-work companion of a groundskeeper who often pulls the equivalent of double shifts and couldn’t leave him unattended at home for that length of time.
Not that he’d want to anyway.
When a dog is as energetic and earnest and irrepressible as Cooper, he can tug your heartstrings just as firmly as he grabs that sailing Frisbee right out of the air.
Just as Cooper isn’t another Schottzie, Britt Barry is no kin to Carl Spackler, the crazed, disheveled gopher-hunting greenskeeper played by Bill Murray in the 1980 movie Caddyshack.
A three-sport athlete at Montpelier High School in northwest Ohio, Barry attended Wilmington College, where he got a degree in agronomy.
Following an internship at a Cincinnati golf course and another with the New York Mets in 2010 – during that season he also moonlighted with a minor-league club in Brooklyn – he joined the Dragons grounds crew as an assistant.
He became the head groundskeeper with the Class A Lexington Legends in 2012 and then last season took over here in Dayton. That put him with one of the best franchises in the minor leagues.
Parade Magazine just named Fifth Third Field among its top five favorite baseball parks – major and minor leagues – in the nation.
“Fifth Third was the first of its kind when it was built in 2000, and it’s still an amazing park,” Barry said. “The Dragons are a first-class organization from the stadium and the staff itself, right on down to the field.”
For the latter, the groundskeeper must be adept at everything from soil science to analyzing weather radar and, of course, there are also the long hours.
“Anywhere from 90 to 110 hours a week when the team is in town,” Barry said.
“We spend three to four hours a day just on the infield dirt,” he said. “We flood it after each game to get moisture all the way down and then in the morning we nail drag it – we use a big board with nails in it – that takes out all the cleat marks and works conditioner in. We water it a bunch more times and make sure there’s a smooth transition from grass to dirt and back to grass again because you don’t want the ball to have any bad hops.”
He and his crew work on the mound after each game, patching up places where certain pitchers dig in – “If a pitcher is struggling, he tends to dig in a lot more, hoping to get better footing or just do something to change things up,” Barry said – and they also mow the field every day.
With the use of growth regulators, grass may grow only an eighth to a quarter inch a day, but Barry said that affects the way a ball is played.
Some big-league teams adjust their infield to the people they have playing, whether they want the ball to get to them faster or not, depending on the age and agility of the fielder. As late Chicago White owner Bill Veeck once put it: “A good groundskeeper can be worth four to seven games a season.”
Besides grass length there are the ever-changing patterns – diamonds, checkerboards, stripes – Barry and his crew cut into their outfield lawn of Kentucky Bluegrass.
Among the myriad other jobs, the one that causes the most sleeplessness is deciding when the tarp – which can be harmful to the grass if left on too long – needs to be stretched over the field when there’s a threat of overnight rain.
“Right now our rule of thumb is 30 percent,” Barry said. “If there’s 30 percent chance of showers we put it on.”
He admits there are at least three or four times a season when he awakens at home to the sound of an unexpected rain storm, immediately calls his helpers and then speeds through the night back to Fifth Third to roll out the tarp and save the field for that night’s game.
“When it comes to rain,” he shrugged, “we’re on call 24/7.”
Barry was working in Lexington when he got his six-week-old pup. Jill West, then his girlfriend and now the woman he’ll wed at season’s end in October – she runs the Two Scoops of Sugar bakery with her twin sister in Washington Courthouse – picked out the name.
“It could be short for Cooperstown so it really fit,” he grinned.
While Cooper got some basic obedience school training, like most blue heelers he’s especially intelligent and now can do a variety of tricks.
“He gets along with all the players, too,” Barry said. “A lot of them have dogs, but they’re 15 to 16 hours away, so Cooper kind of reminds them of theirs. They play with him and throw the Frisbee and he loves it.”
Come game time Cooper is relegated to the groundskeeper’s office with his favorite bones.
Afterward, he returns to Barry’s side for at least an hour of postgame work on the field and his shotgun rides in the utility cart.
Then, as midnight approaches, he hops back into the big pickup truck and they make the trip back home.
“Normally when we get home he’s ready for bed,” Barry said. “He’s had a full day and he sleeps pretty well.”
And, if it isn’t raining, Britt Barry does, too.