MINNEAPOLIS — Hours before the stands are full, Ramón Laureano leaves his shoes in the clubhouse, walks into the dugout, skips up the steps and trots onto the field. He steps on the dirt, then the grass, barefoot as he meanders through the outfield at whichever ballpark he will play in that night.

The Orioles outfielder first learned this in 2018, when he played for Triple-A Nashville, then an affiliate of the Oakland Athletics. Six years later, when he returned to the minor leagues after a vibrant few years in the majors, it all came flooding back.

Those early arrivals at a small ballpark, finding ways to pass time long before first pitch. In 2018, Laureano first watched Jake Smolinski take off his socks and shoes and walk around the outfield. Laureano grew curious enough to ask his teammate what he was possibly up to.

“He was walking, walking barefoot,” Laureano said. “He taught me all that. I thought, ‘F--- yeah, I’ll do that, too.’”

The practice is called grounding or earthing, and it has grown popular with pockets of Major League Baseball players. The lifestyle centers around the idea that bodily contact with the Earth promotes relaxation and reduces inflammation.

Smolinski, who played parts of five years in the majors, walked barefoot in the outfield. Following suit, so did Laureano, back and forth, finding an inner peace amid the swirl of a nonstop baseball schedule.

“In Triple-A, I’d get there at 12 and just walk on grass, shirtless, no shoes, nothing, barefoot and shirtless,” Laureano said. “What a life. The sun, it’s anti-inflammatory. God gave us that. And God gave us grass. He gave us everything. He gave us the dirt to clean our brain from all the toxins our brain absorbs, and that’s it.”

It’s just one of Laureano’s quirks, but it helps explain the 30-year-old Dominican Republic native who joined Baltimore as a depth outfielder over the winter.

Among others is the decision to eat food made only with vegetable oils, not seed oils. He only drinks water at the ballpark — and he drinks only Mountain Valley Spring Water, which comes in a glass bottle, to avoid plastics. His locker is full of the tall, green glass bottles, and he carries one almost everywhere he goes.

Those choices are all made with baseball in mind. And they became regular aspects of his life again last year, when he signed a minor league deal with the Atlanta Braves and found himself at the Triple-A level again.

He had his eyes on a return to the major leagues. To get there, Laureano remembered all the things he did to make the jump once before.

Shoes off, socks off, he took the outfield grass for a pregame walk.

“I used to do it while I was in Triple-A. So I thought, ‘Oh, f---, I gotta get back to that,’” Laureano said. “In the career of a baseball player, you are sometimes an adjustment away. It’s not because of this I’m doing good. No, no, no. But sometimes you need to remind yourself of things you used to do. You complicate things whenever you are not succeeding or things are not going the way you want, and you try to do your scouting report and go back to the way you were before.”

Ramón Laureano hits a home run in the seventh inning against the Cincinnati Reds on April 19.

Laureano hasn’t gone all the way back to how he used to connect with the Earth. In Triple-A, he would wander onto the grass shirtless and lie sunbathing in center field, but he said there are too many cameras in a major league stadium for him to feel comfortable with that practice.

Instead, two or three times a week, Laureano walks along, maintaining a practice Smolinski introduced. Smolinski, a former second-rounder for the Washington Nationals, doesn’t remember how he got into the practice. But he’s a firm believer in the benefits that can come from connecting with the ground.

“For me, it was a time to get my body right, get my mind right, physically and mentally, and that was the best prep I had to start the day,” he said.

All the travel, all the time spent in cleats, can be exhausting. Smolinski, who lives in Maine and is out of baseball, remembers Laureano in 2018 for his eagerness to pick up helpful habits from the more veteran players around him.

Smolinski had already played in the majors at that point. He knew the pressure involved, so he took to grounding exercises to improve his mental health.

Laureano, then just 23, debuted for Oakland later that season. But first he took Smolinski’s advice.

“You take a few minutes or 30 to get your body and your mind right, just to get yourself set for whether or not you’re trying to correct something, work yourself out of a slump, or whether or not you’re in a good stretch and you’re trying to keep that rolling,” Smolinski said. “The body-mind connection is just so big in baseball — and sport, really — that I think that’s what you’re practicing during that time, for yourself. To embrace that and figure out how you’re going to apply it for the day.”

So much is handled for the player once he reaches the major leagues. There are multiple trainers to help with weightlifting and stretching. Clubhouse attendants clean lockers, wash cleats, pack bags. The lights shine brighter on the field, and there are fewer logistical nightmares off it.

Ramón Laureano has 531 hits and 85 home runs in 2,161 major league at-bats.

Laureano was suspended 80 games in 2021 for testing positive for an anabolic steroid. He said in a statement at the time the “minuscule amount” was caused by “contamination of something I ingested.” Laureano told the Banner he preferred not to comment on his suspension.

Back in Triple-A last year, having competed at the highest level, Laureano took to maintaining his own body, because he knows the minor league staff has 20-plus players to worry about. Part of that was reconnecting with grounding. Another was his transition away from plastics when possible.

Laureano read an article about the poor side effects microplastics can produce. It was easy to scratch the plastic bottles that fill refrigerators across baseball for a healthier alternative.

In came cases upon cases of Mountain Valley glass bottles. It isn’t written into his contract — “Nothing crazy like that,” he said — but Fred Tyler, the Orioles’ clubhouse manager, knows to keep Mountain Valley bottles nearby.

Most of the time, though, Laureano goes out of his way to stock his locker.

“It’s coming from me, from my house,” Laureano said. “Usually, I travel with four or five bottles in my luggage, two more in my backpack and maybe three more in my baseball bag. There’s all waters all around, so you don’t have to think about it.”

In Washington, a full case of Mountain Valley glass bottles sat in his locker. In Detroit last month, Tyler informed the Tigers’ visiting clubhouse manager to stock a few bottles for Laureano, and he found them waiting in the fridge. Laureano had four more visible Tuesday afternoon at Target Field.

He picked one up as he prepared to head to the field. Laureano kept his shoes on this time — it’s not an everyday activity to walk barefoot on the grass — but there will be more times this week and this season for him to soak in the sun and feel real earth between his toes.

“What a great f---ing time,” Laureano said. “Anti-inflammatory for the body, and it relaxes your mind.”