Wiktionary
n. (context softball baseball English) The dirt or other material on the edge of a baseball or softball field that warns a player that he or she is approaching the fence, especially the portion in the outfield.
Wikipedia
The warning track is the part of the baseball field that is closest to the wall or fence and is typically made of dirt, instead of grass or artificial turf like most of the field. It runs parallel to the ballpark's wall and looks like a running track. The change of terrain from grass to dirt serves as a "warning" for fielders trying to make a deep catch that they are running out of room, since it is often difficult for the fielder to keep his eye on a fly ball while keeping track of his position relative to the wall.
Despite the warning track's presence, it is common to see outfielders crash into the wall to make a catch, due to a desire to field the play regardless of the outcome and/or because they fail to register the warning in time (as the track is on the ground, an outfielder pursuing a fly ball in the air will be looking in the opposite direction and thus the warning track would be out of the outfielder's line of sight in any event).
The "track" part of the term comes from Old Yankee Stadium, where an actual running track was built for the use of track and field events. It was soon realized that the track also helped outfielders know when they were approaching the wall, and soon every ballpark was using one. However, there still are professional fields without a proper warning track, such as Tropicana Field, which uses brown-colored turf. The Tokyo Dome at one point had no warning track.
The average length of the warning track (depending on the ballpark) is 690 ft while the width is 15 ft.
At Rogers Centre, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays, there is an area circumnavigating the baseball field which is colored brown (like a warning track) but it is actually the identical turf surface as the rest of the field - Rogers Centre's status as a multipurpose stadium would make a real warning track unworkable. However once the Argos leave the stadium and move to BMO Field, Rogers Centre will get a natural grass field, and presumably a real warning track as well.
Usage examples of "warning track".
The Buffer Zone is a five-mile-wide strip of airspace south of the Military Demarcation Line that acts like a 'warning track' to aircraft operating near the DMZ.
Mackelroy caught one on the warning track in center, then threw out the runner from third on a one-hopper to end the game.
He always seems to know which ones to field and which ones,to let roll on out to the warning track.
It was the warning track, a band three meters or so wide at the edge of the playing surface, intended to alert fielders of their proximity to the fence.
That's what I was doing when I saw the warning track, and looked back up and spotted the ball coming down, so I jumped, trying to jump straight up, you know, but I had a lot of momentum, and had completely forgotten about the gravity, so I shot up and caught the ball, amazing, but found myself flying right over the fence.
The ball was hit so high that he had time to get all the way back to the warning track, and he would have caught it if he'd seen it.