There’s a good chance that at any given moment, if you were to drive past Marcusen Park you’d see Matt Raso working on the old field.

As groundskeeper for the historic park, Raso spends about 20 to 25 hours a week mowing, lining, picking up trash and more, but it’s little wonder — Raso practically breathes the game of baseball.

“I’ve been playing baseball since I was 5, 6 years old,” Raso said. “In the backyard with my grandpa and dad, hitting the whiffle ball around.”

Matt’s family in fact is a baseball family. His grandpa, Joe Raso, even got a taste of the big time, playing in the Chicago Cubs farm system.

Joe didn’t get any actual playing time in the majors, but he did get one of the best seats in the house for nearly two months when in 1946 he was called up to the Cubs’ for six weeks, filling a spot left open due to injury.

Upon ending his time in the majors, Joe came back to play for the Austin Packers semi-pro team after gaining a job with Hormel Foods.

Matt’s dad, Mike Raso, is currently an umpire and has coached Little League and youth baseball teams Matt has played on. Both Matt and Mike also played ball at Iowa Western Community College.

In high school, Matt, predominantly a pitcher/infielder until his sophomore year when he turned to catching, can even say he caught a few times for current Chicago Cubs pitcher Mike Wurtz.

He also counted several Greyhounds players he plays with among his teammates at the time.

Matt played at Iowa Western for year before earning a partial scholarship to play baseball at St. Cloud State University and then transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Stout for the last two years of college.

Ironically, Matt, who was already playing a summer’s worth of games, didn’t play those last two years.

“You play 60 to 70 games in Iowa and then come back and play all summer,” he said, admitting all the baseball was burning him out.

Matt is the usual starting catcher for the Greyhounds, which he has been playing with since 2000 as well as getting some time on the mound.

“It’s been a sweet ride,” Matt said of playing with the Hounds. “We’ve made the state tournament every year since 2001 except this past year, played in a lot of cool parks and played in front of 1,000 people.”

With all of this baseball in his life, maybe it was a given he would be working as a groundskeeper.

The first year he got some work it came with helping Joe Serratore, who was in charge of keeping the field in shape at the time.

“Serratore was out here one year and I didn’t have a job in the summer,” Matt said. “He let me come down and mow and drag.”

When the Marcusen Park Baseball Association took over, Matt grabbed the opportunity to be the groundskeeper.

“The Marcusen Park group took care of the field over in 2005 and Ron Ripley asked if I wanted to do it,” said Matt, sitting on the field’s mower. “It’s a mini-dream job.”

Work on the field generally falls to Raso and Ripley, who does a lot of the weeding of the field as well as the signs that line the outfield fence.

“I got to give Ron a lot of credit for this,” Raso said.

If you like baseball, it is a great job. Aside from the 20 to 25 hours a day, coming down in the afternoons to tend to the field, Raso will also spend time after home games to take care of the field, making sure it’s in top playing condition and admits it can get to be quite the effort.

“It’s kind of chaotic when you’re playing,” Raso said. “You work on the field, play catch for a couple minutes and then play. But I get a lot of the (Greyhounds) helping out.”

But in the end, it speaks to the love of the game.

“It gets to be a lot with one guy, but you’re on your own time and you’re outside,” Raso said. “What else do you want?”