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Green Becomes Official Color of Baseball
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Cincinnati has also jumped to the side of environmentalism, with the Reds this season implementing an aggressive plan to conserve energy and to recycle materials, according to Declan Mullin, the team's vice president for ballpark operations. For opening day, the Reds purchased carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint. The team uses recycled fertilizer on the grass, reuses its grass clippings as fertilizer outside the park, and uses generators to power the field lights for night games to save electricity. A new scoreboard will be powered by solar panels. "Even down to the programs and yearbooks -- we're recycling it all," Mullin said.
Additionally, the Reds are using a computer to track utility use at the ballpark in real time. If monitors determine that too much electricity is being used on a given day, for example, they can shut down air conditioning to some "noncritical areas," including the offices.
"We like to say, 'It's not just the grass that's green,' " Mullin said. The team, he said, is "just trying to be environmentally friendly and conscious, and making sure that we're good stewards" of the planet.
Despite the work baseball is doing, it is a football team, the green-jersey-wearing Philadelphia Eagles, that is credited with being among the first professional sports franchises to embrace environmentalism, back in 2003. Using lights powered partly by wind and making sure the team members planted trees to make up for the carbon dioxide emissions from the plane used for road games, the Eagles gave their team chant "Go, Green" an intentional double meaning.
Basketball, too, has gotten into the game. The Houston Rockets, for example, started a campaign called It's Time to Go Green that included dressing up its team mascot, a fuzzy gray bear named Clutch, head-to-toe in green.
Hershkowitz said baseball's leaguewide effort is inspiring interest in the NBA.
"Everybody loves baseball," he said. "Baseball stepped up to the plate on this issue a long time ago."
