Infield Rascal Pro – Walk-Through
Transcript
Hello. My name is Scott Holmes and I’m the Executive Vice President at ABI. In this white booth video, I’m going to walk you through the most popular and innovative pull behind infield groomer on the market today. With three different models available, ABI Sports Turf has provided a pull behind infield groomer for every facility and every budget. Now, if you carry the responsibility of making sure that America’s favorite pastime is played on a safe and effective infield, you do not want to be left behind on the newest and most effective way to maintain those infields.
So let me introduce you to and walk you through the Infield Rascal from ABI. In this video, I’m going to focus specifically on the Infield Rascal Pro, the most effective pull behind infield groomer designed specifically for infield maintenance.
The infield Rascal Pro is a rugged baseball and softball infield surface groomer that has the versatility to daily groom the highest level infield surface and perform light infield renovations that can not be duplicated by other infield groomers on the market. The infield Rascal Pro is reinventing the way sports complex facilities are managing their properties, and specifically their infields. And I know this to be true because of these three reasons. First, ABI’s motto is always be innovative. We never bring a product to market simply to have something to sell. Never. We research, invent and solve problems like no one else can, or we won’t sell it. Period.
Secondly, ABI is always listening to you. Our customers on the challenges you are facing in your day to day workload. And we are always making our equipment better. We never settle for what we have done in the past, but are always challenging ourselves to provide you something better. So as I’m walking you through the Infield Rascal Pro, you don’t have to believe me. I know that trust is earned and not given, but know that many of the world’s top industry experts trust us and stand behind the products that we built. So let’s take a close look at the Infield Rascal Pro.
Let’s start with the overall construction of the Pro. Now, one of the problems with most other infield groomers on the market is that they are made of a cheap construction and simply do not last. As we were developing the Infield Rascal, one of the most common complaints that we heard was that most competitive groomers were always breaking down. Not with the Infield Rascal Pro. Remember, we had to design this frame to not only withstand your constant daily grooming needs, but also handle light renovation and decompaction of your infields. The Infield Rascal Pro is made up of a welded main frame built from two and a half by two and a half inch tube steel. The frame is fully welded except at the pivoting joints and the tongue where we have attached a two inch ball. And this is to provide a rugged and long lasting service life. This is truly a commercial grade piece of equipment built to take the abuse of hours of daily use.
One of the most important components of the Infield Rascal Pro is this pair of stabilizing and transport wheels. These tires are 16 and a half inches tall and eight inches wide. These are real flotation tires and are a critical part of the patented wheel lift system, which we will look at next. These tires serve four different functions for the Rascal Pro.
Secondly, these tires keep the Infield Rascal Pro from pitching side to side. When making tight turns on an infield with groomer’s that don’t have significant stabling wheels, the attachments can pitch side to side, gouging your infield, leaving a very inconsistent surface, but not with the Infield Rascal Pro. Our stabilizing wheels will keep the frame and its ground engaging attachments stable, giving you a very consistent infield material.
The third function of the stabilizing wheels is to allow the Infield Rascal to float on loose or wet material, which will keep it from sinking into the soft spots, which again would give you an inconsistent depth.
When it comes to stabilizing tires, size does matter. The taller and the wider the tire is, the more stable a pull behind implement will be. Don’t be fooled by the little tires found on other infield groomers. They just don’t do the job. The ABI stabilizing tires are real tires with replaceable hubs, spindles, and bearings for long service life. But the fourth and ultimate function of the tires is that they give you the operator control of all the ground engaging attachments that go with the Infield Rascal Pro. It’s critical that you have control of your infield groomer. And why is this important? Because an attachment with no operator of control will never produce consistent results. Never. Let me say that again. An operator who has no control of the ground engaging attachments can never get consistent results. The moisture in your ground changes day to day. The conditioner is moved around during games. How hard or soft an infield is changes from week to week with the weather and the volume of play. Your infield is never the same. And if you want an infield where the ball bounces true, athletes stay safe, and you’re most trafficked areas properly manage moisture, then you must have control of the infield groomer and not be satisfied with an attachment that just flops around while you drive in circles. The tires on the infield Rascal Pro allow you to control the amount of weight and pressure applied to your infield.
And this leads us to our patented wheel lift system that controls the stabilizing wheels. By simply spinning the handle, this two thousand pound crank jack, you can easily raise and lower the stabilizing wheels of the Infield Rascal Pro. This allows you to control the ground engaging attachments that come with a Rascal Pro. Although this wheel lift system is controlled with a manual jack, one of the options that you can purchase is an electric actuator that lets you raise and lower the wheels from the seat of your tow vehicle. This actuator has a bar mounted thumb controller or you may want to purchase the wireless remote, which is an option.
This wheel lift system serves three purposes. First, it allows the Rascal to be lifted off the ground for easy transport on and off the field and around your facility. Secondly, it allows you to gauge and control the maximum depth of penetration into the surface, whether that be a quarter inch deep for daily grooming or half inch to three inches deep for light renovation work. When your infield is extremely hard, the wheels may be raised out of play to allow the full weight of the tool to be placed on the ground for more aggressive action. Finally, when the wheels are all the way down and the frame is lifted up in the air. This allows you easy swapping out of the underbelly components.
And in a minute, I’m going to take you through all of the mid-mount and finish attachments at the Infield Rascal Pro can receive. But first, I’d like to give you an overview of the VibraFlex drag and the profile blades for the Infield Rascal Pro. On this Infield Rascal Pro, we had the VibraFlex attachment mounted and we call this the VibraFlex attachment because of the action it offers to your surface. When daily grooming and infield, it is critical that you produce the exact results you want, regardless of the condition of your ground. The VibraFlex attachment allows you to get these results. Instead of using a homemade nail board which gouges the infield when wet and hops around on top when the ground is too hard, the VibraFlex tines flex with the condition of the infield and vibrate side to side, literally dancing across the infield to properly shatter surface tension. So with the controls of the Infield Rascal Pro, this action produces a beautifully consistent mix of your soils and conditioners at the exact depth that you desire. So that’s the VibraFlex attachment. And I’ll get into more detail in just a moment. But now let’s talk about the biggy. The one attachment of ABI into grievers that has the whole industry buzzing and our competitors scrambling. Let’s talk about the profile blade attachment.
ABI has invented the way to manage one of the most difficult conditions in infield maintenance. The compacted subsurface. Your infields are always in great condition when the first game of the seasons played. But after rain, games, and the wear and tear of hundreds of ballplayers, the subsurface becomes hard as a rock. And the problem is that it’s not even consistently hard. The infield is so compacted and hard that balls bounce in all directions and bounce hot. No one wants to see a player get hit in the face because the ball doesn’t bounce true. So all groundskeepers want to believe this compaction at least once or twice a year. But how do you do it without tearing up the infield and having to get a laser box out and put it back to grade? The ABI patent pending profile blade attachment is the way.
For light renovation, the profile blades will renovate your ballfield by slicing through the profile of your infield at any desired depth between a half an inch to three inches. This depth depends on the structure of your soil layers. These blades will slice through the subsurface without displacing the material. They simply lift and release the infeld skin without pushing it around like attachments that have rippers or loosening teeth. These other attachments will change the grade of your infield and will require a skilled operator with specific equipment to set it back to grade. The Profile blade effectively loosen a compacted infield, allowing air and moisture to get back into the mix. Now, when you reset the infield, it will be as firm as needed while still having a slight cushion and perfectly consistent depth.
By using the Profile blade and the VibraFlex attachments to lightly renovate, you can now decompact and reset your infield in just a few hours. There’s an additional benefit to the profile blades in that they will cut weeds and grass at the root level to remove creeping grasses from infields and warning tracks, as well as remove lip buildup along the outfield edge. Earlier, I made a big deal out of the stabilizing tweels giving you control of the ground enguaging attachments. Well, not only to the stabilizing wheels give you control, but the Infield Rascal Pro has an adjustable turnbuckle at the top of the frame that lets you adjust the angle in which the attachment makes contact with the ground.
This is critical because there may be times and conditions when you want the Rascal attachments to pitch forward or backward for a more aggressive or passive contact with your infield. This adjustment also makes the variance in hitch heights of multiple tow vehicles a non-issue, as with so many of our competitors.
Finally, on the back of the tube of the Infield Rascal Pro are too quick attach connectors. And these i-bolts enables a quick and easy connection of all the finishing attachments. When you want to transport your Infield Rascal Pro from place to place, simply lift the finishing attachment off the ground and set it on the included attachment carrier.
But now that I’ve walked you through the details of the Infield Rascal Rascal Pro, let’s look at all the attachments available to this revolutionary infield groomer. You will notice that on this display stand are all of the ABI ground engaging attachments. Not all of them will work on all the Infield Rascals. So it’s important for you to know which ones will and which ones won’t work for the Rascal that you are most interested in.
All of these attachments are available for the MVP. However, the Pro cannot use the scarifiers and the Rookie cannot use the scarifiers or the profile blades. The first attachment is the VibraFlex drag’s and one of these two models come standard with the Infield Rascal Pro. We have designed two different VibraFlex frames. The 5800 and the 3800. These numbers refer to the amount of evenly staggered u-pins. The 5800 should be used in a more professional, high clay content infield where the skin plays really firm and the materials do not move around much at all. In this example, you would want to use the 1/8 inch pins pins so that they literally dance across the surface, shattering the surface tension at less than a quarter inch in depth. That’s all the depth you really need to properly groom an infield with a higher clay content. It’s with the 1/8 inch u-pin is that you will get the most flex and vibration. You can swap out the 1/8 inch U-pins for the quarter inch pins if you want a more aggressive loosening action at different times in the season. Just remember that with the 5800 VibraFlex there is only a half an inch of spacing between the U-pins. More often than not, most of our customers will want the 3800 VibraFlex because for recreational and high school level infields where the silt and the sand content is higher, this model will work better. And here’s why. The 3800 has thirty eight u-pins, which creates a three quarter inch spacing, not the half inch spacing of the 5800. This allows more material to flow through the VibraFlex drag without the material building and plugging up. The 3800 accepts the one quarter inch and the three eight inch U-pins, and the quarter inch is what will most commonly be used for daily grooming. You will only want to use the 3/8 inch u-pins first thing in the spring if you really want to open up the infield. Now, I will say that for many of the multi field complexes, you might want both the 5800 and the 3800 VibraFlex drags, as they can be swapped out in minutes. And we’ll give you great flexibility in maintaining your infields.
At the bottom of this display stand as a combo piece, which is for display only and it’s made of the rigid drag mat and the coco mat. Both the rigid and coco mat are members of the quick swap finishing attachments for the Infield Rascal Pro. Both of these finishing attachments are six foot wide, andcome with an integrated leveling bar which consistently floats your infield material, keeping it level as it knocks down the high spots and fills in the low spots.
It’s made with a nearly indestructible towbar, and the steel mesh and the coco mat is designed to be replaced when worn out. When your infield material is dry, you will normally want to use the rigid drag mat. But, when there’s a lot of moisture, mud puddles on the field, you will definitely want to try out the coco mat.
Now, on this side of the display stand, we first had the profile blade that come standard with the Infield Rascal Pro. As I mentioned earlier, these profile blades are primarily designed for light renovation and decompaction work. However, the profile blades are the only way to decompact your infield without pushing around the material and taking it out of grade. When you use perpendicular loosening teeth, such as a traditional nail board or a box scraper are rototiller, there is no way not take away the grade of the infield. And the grade is critical to safe play and proper and quick percolation of rainwater.
These profile blades slice beneath the surface of the infield, similar to a sod cutter, or like a knife that’s going through butter, and it will lift and aerate the infield mix from a depth of a half an inch to three inches. And you don’t lose your grade. All you have to do to reset the infield is to run the VibraFlex drag over a few times while pulling a heavy duty drag mat behind, and your surface will be ready to play in just a few hours.
Additionally, these profile blade can be used to remove vegetation at the root level without using a herbicide such as Roundup. This is becoming a bigger issue throughout the United States. Also, many of our customer use the profile blades for removing the creeping grasses along the edge of the infield. I recommend that you edge the outfield line and then use the profile blades to slip under the vegetation and the unwanted creeping grass will peel right up. This is an incredible time saver.
We often get questions about the wear life on these blades. And the honest answer is, it all depends. It depends on the type of material you have. It depends on how often you use them and where you use them. For most customers who use the profile blades just a few times a year, they will last for many seasons. Below the profile blades is the 3800 VibraFlex. We’ve already discussed that in great detail. So I’m going to move right on to the fine finish broom.
This broom is seven foot wide and comes with three rows of replaceable bristles. You will notice that the mounting arms are adjustable so that you can get the exact working angle that works best for your material and moisture content. This broom floats independently from the main frame and has the perfect way to produce a beautiful finish to your infield. My personal opinion is that if your infield is already clod free, the fine finish broom leaves the best finish in both high and low moisture content. And the maintenance of the broom is very simple because when the bristles were out, they simply slide out and you put the new ones back in.
So there you have it, a complete education on the Infield Rascal Pro and all of the mid-mount and rear-mount attachments. No other infield groomer on the market can make the claims of the Infield Rascal Pro and no other infield groomer has the backing endorsements of the world’s leading experts in infield materials and maintenance. The bottom line, there is no other infield groomer like the Infield Rascal Pro from ABI Sports Turf.
To find out more about how to make the Infield Rascal pro a part of your infield maintenance program. Call our toll free number at 877-788-7253 and speak with one of our product specialists. They will talk you through our current pricing, money back guarantee, and current delivery availability.