Cubs take day off, Sox take field — both right call
You know what they say about the weather in Chicago.
If you don’t like it, wait 15 minutes.
Or is it, if you don’t like the weather, go eight miles south?
That was the case Monday in the city spring forgot, where enough snow fell at Wrigley Field for the Cubs to postpone their home opener 24 hours to 1:20 p.m. Tuesday. Yet the White Sox’s 5-4 loss to the Rays started only 20 minutes late Monday on the South Side despite 2 inches of the white stuff greeting head groundskeeper Roger Bossard at 5:20 a.m. when he arrived at Guaranteed Rate Field. It created such a wintry scene that the giant video boardcarried the message pregame: “Happy Holidays.”
The legend of “The Sodfather” grows.
“Disco Demolition in 1979 was a horrific day for me, and this wasn’t as bad as that, but still one heck of a challenge,” said Bossard, who has been saving Sox playing surfaces since 1967. “I have to be honest with you. I got hold of my crew when everyone came in at 7 and said I wanted to get this done. I love the challenge and have to thank my crew.”
The Sox played a game against the Rays, the Cubs blamed bad conditions for scrapping theirs with the Pirates, and both teams did the right thing. Anybody driving to Wrigleyville from Chicago’s southern corridor Monday morning understood that quirky dynamic based on how snowy traveling became just north of the Loop. Nobody wins with left fielder Kyle Schwarber chasing a fly ball on such a slick surface.
“Just too much lake-effect snow,” Cubs business president Crane Kenney told reporters outside the clubhouse. On the frozen grounds of the Park at Wrigley, four snowmen fans built made Kenney’s description easy to believe. So did the snowballs thrown by catcher Willson Contreras, a Venezuelan seeing snow for the second time in person.
The Cubs had a scheduled off day Tuesday as protection against weather wiping out the home opener. The Sox had no such luxury with the Rays making their only visit to the South Side and an organizational charity event Tuesday night, making a Wednesday doubleheader nobody relished playing the only alternative, according to a team official.
Frustrated Cubs fans who took a day off work to attend Monday’s game at Wrigley probably still wonder whether the Cubs could have played if they had started clearing snow as early as the Sox and Bossard did. Two groups of people stopped me on Waveland Avenue on my way from Wrigley to 35th and Shields — both of whom lived a two-hour drive away — to question why the
Sox still were playing when the Cubs didn’t. Sorry, only Mother Nature and The Sodfather know for sure.
Bossard reported 2.25 inches of snow at his ballpark and immediately started spraying water — which comes out between 48 and 50 degrees in Chicago — to melt eight hours before the scheduled first pitch. To remove the rest, Bossard came up with an unorthodox plan for his 23-person crew to clear what he estimated was between 200 and 300 tons of snow.
“I made my lawnmowers into snowplows and pushed it off with the mowers,” said Bossard, 69. “Every once in a while, I come up with crazy stuff and this time it worked. I tricked them again.”
Not that Bossard believes trickery could have helped his good friend Justin Spillman, the Cubs groundskeeper. Spillman also tried using the sprinklers to melt more snow than Bossard had to confront but his crews didn’t begin clearing it until after the team postponed the game just after 11. The Cubs originally delayed the first pitch to 2:20 before calling it altogether an hour later, with manager Joe Maddon’s blessing.
“On the way out I had no idea if I was going to the Cubs Convention (in January) or opening day, so I thought it was the right thing to do,” Maddon said.
Every weary reliever in the Cubs’ active bullpen agreed.
“I’m glad it was them and not me,” said Bossard, who communicated with Spillman throughout Monday morning. “Justin Spillman is one of the better young groundskeepers in baseball and used the water procedure too. But if you have more than two inches of snow, you’re not going to be able to do it. They made the right call. They had more snow.”
Blame Lake Michigan more than the Cubs, says ABC-7 meteorologist Cheryl Scott. Whenever a northeast wind blows off the lake, as it did Monday, Scott said Wrigley Field will be affected more than Guaranteed Rate Field. Cubs officials read from the same weather radar the city’s meteorologists do.
“The forecast called for more on and off snow showers through the early afternoon and the focus was along the lakefront because of boundary layer convergence and the influence of a northeast wind off the lake,” Scott said.
Scott Stombaugh, a Cubs season-ticket holder who lives in Bloomington, Ill., received the bad news on his phone just after pulling into his parking spot near Wrigley. Stombaugh’s 10-year-old son, Wesley, reminded dad the Sox were in town too.
“Wesley said, ‘Let’s go,’ ” said Scott, who quickly bought four tickets for $53 online. “We can’t get enough baseball.”
Sitting three rows behind the Rays dugout, the Stombaughs sat in a crowd that looked like a gathering of Sox friends and relatives — from small families. Seats were open enough that Sox vice president Brooks Boyer instructed ushers to let people sit as close as they wanted.
The Sox announced paid attendance at 10,377, an inflated number that included hundreds of fans in Cubs gear whose day got better heading south.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
