Landing that contract was critical in their pursuit of the sports turf customers as they had already supplied the turfgrass for the University of Colorado Buffaloes football stadium and they were custom growing the grass for the Denver Broncos Mile High Stadium and Coors Field, the new home of MLB’s Colorado Rockies. Anyone that knows sports turf knows the sports turf managers for all these stadiums talk to each other, so they figured they might just have a shot. Randy says, “Ten we got a call from George Toma telling us we were in the top four for the Royals field and requesting a tour of the farm.”
George and Dr. Jim Watson, another mentor to Randy and Betsy, came together. Betsy says, “George got down and was crawling around on the grass. He said, ‘Doc, I think this grass will work for us for Chicago.’ Ten he got up, brushed off his hands, shook Randy’s hand and said ‘Young man, I want your grass in Kauffman Stadium for the Royals and I want 100,000 square feet of it for Soldier Field in Chicago for the opening game of World Cup Soccer.’”
George Toma was a spokesperson for John Deere at that time and dealerships had life-size photos of him in their showrooms as part of an advertising promotion. Graffs didn’t know a friend from the local dealership had come to their office early that morning and slipped the George “life size paper doll” into their office. “It was cheesy and embarrassing when George saw it but too funny not to make us all laugh.”
Randy Graff (L) receives the President's Leadership Award from Arthur Milberger (R) during the July 2007 TPI Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Photo from TPI archives
Graffs was only a 120-acre sod farm then and they were growing the grass for three professional sports venues. “Randy wanted to go out and sleep with it to keep it safe,” Betsy reports. Te Chicago game was held on June 17, 1994, the first-time World Cup Soccer was played in the U.S. Randy says, “We shipped our turf 925 miles to
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