Games Played in the Dirt: Baseball and Cricket

It's that time of year again . . . baseball time! And as with so many things in modern civilization, geology has a fundamental part. In the case of baseball, the game is played on dirt, and not just any old dirt but a specifically engineered soil. I've had this article on baseball dirt up for some years now, but the soils of cricket wickets are a matter of intense interest to the engineers of that popular sport, too.
_{Baseball rubbing mud — Geology Guide photo}