CHICAGO -- Roger Bossard has been with the White Sox since 1967 and has been head groundskeeper since 1983.
Bossard -- nicknamed the "Sodfather" -- is an icon in the industry, a true innovator, if you will. Yet, with all those years excelling on the job, he has almost never dealt with a situation akin to the storm hitting Rate Field Sunday afternoon during a 3-2 White Sox loss to the Angels.
That intense rainfall began around 2:48 p.m. CT, and within minutes it was an absolute deluge. Winds gusted in the 35 to 40 mph range, and there was hail for the first time in Bossard’s illustrious and lengthy tenure.
“I have to be honest with you. Disco Demolition [on July 12, 1979] is No. 1 on my hit list, of course. This is probably No. 2,” Bossard said after the White Sox lost their second straight. “I’ve never run into where I had three inches of water on the infield and then got it ready. I’m proud of my crew and the job they did.
“But the hail was really surprising. You get hail and 35 mph winds and … We got the game in.”
Bossard knew the storm was coming and alerted Alan Porter, Sunday’s second-base umpire and the crew chief. But Porter made the right call to keep playing, according to Bossard, with the storm coming in so fast and so forcefully.
Game action went from Matt Thaiss on second, following a double, with one out and a 3-2 count to Miguel Vargas in a 2-2 game in the bottom of the seventh, to huge masses of water across the infield and near home plate. The grounds crew couldn’t get the tarp across the field, as it got stuck near the pitcher’s mound, leaving first base, the second-base area and home plate uncovered until they could add five or six extra smaller tarps.
“A lot of our guys were on the other end, and I don’t know, for some reason the wind got underneath and they pulled the wrong part of the tarp and it just got us,” Bossard said. “That’s all. And when you get these high winds and rain like this and that quarter of an inch of rain now, then if there’s any mistakes at all, you just don’t get it covered. So it caught us. But we were ready for it. The winds, the hail caught us.”
“Someone said there was a bayou in the third-base area,” said a smiling White Sox starter Davis Martin of the storm’s after-effects. “They did a great job getting the field ready because we didn't think there was going to be a possibility of that, especially when the hail started coming down."
Martin started for the White Sox, back when things were sunny and bright in Chicago, and allowed two unearned runs over six innings. Those two runs came in the first, when Martin threw 20 of his 25 pitches for strikes but didn’t get much help defensively. The right-hander needed just 66 pitches to get through the next five innings.
Nick Maton homered off Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz during a two-run White Sox first, marking the first leadoff homer of his career. In that opening frame, the White Sox started with five straight connections with over 100 mph exit velocity, according to Statcast, but Kochanowicz limited the damage to two runs.
Two hours and 48 minutes after the storm hit, the game resumed with Vargas drawing one of the longest walks by time measurement in recent memory when Angels reliever Ben Joyce threw the first pitch back out of the zone. It was a walk charged to Ryan Zeferjahn, who left the mound in the storm.
Sunday’s resumption came after four and a half tons, which is 175 bags, of drying compound was used by Bossard -- a new career-high. The umpiring crew, White Sox general manager Chris Getz, White Sox manager Will Venable, Angels general manager Perry Minasian and Angels manager Ron Washington checked the field with Bossard and checked the footing on three different occasions before action resumed.
Ultimately, the White Sox lost the game and the opening series. It was amazing they were even able to finish, with a 35-degree forecast on Monday’s horizon.
“I said to Alan, ‘I’m not sure this time.’ I’m usually quite positive on that stuff. But [we do] what we have to do, and I called MLB and told them, ‘I need a shot. Give me my chance,’” Bossard said. “Then after about an hour of work, I got everybody out there from both clubs and there were three or four spots a little iffy and fixed them and we got it in.
“I’m very happy. I’m going to go home tonight and I’m going to sleep real well.”