Mexico will play Brazil in an international friendly match at Gillette Stadium on Sept. 12. Sod will be laid over the artificial turf field for the game.
Mr. Benepe said that the sod for the fields would be installed within a month and that progress on the park, which runs along the west side of River Avenue, was "going like gangbusters now".
The sod on the field, nicknamed the sacred acre, has to be replaced.
Sydney organizers last week threatened to switch 11 Olympic soccer matches to other locations unless stadium officials put new sod on the field.
Everything should be packed up and removed by 8 p.m. Just in case, the Yankees have brought in a truck filled with fresh sod if the field needs to be repaired.
At the top of the ridge, where we stopped, a Hasid in black robes stared out across the Coachella Valley, past the lush plot of Palm Springs, which sat in the dun funnel of mountains like a piece of sod on a field of dirt.
Improvements at Norwood Thompson Playground include a refurbished basketball court, new baseball field sod and dugouts and landscaping; new water fountains, fencing and concrete sidewalks; renovated restrooms and a new concession area.
Like countless other American subdivisions and exurbs that sprang from sod farms and potato fields, Millcreek is now a dense quilt of big front yards, gated communities, McMansions and Brady Bunch-era homes, Chinese buffets and strip-mall nail studios.
They watched the Lions and the Packers battle on that muddy, chewed-up baseball sod beneath the center-field bleachers, with the upper-deck overhang in right field and all those posts that blocked views of fans.
And local officials, members of Congress, federal officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and a gaggle of schoolchildren gathered to celebrate on the still-squishy sod of the restored field.
