Terreno Deportivo

CHICAGO — The hero for the White Sox in their season-saving win late Sunday afternoon was supposed to be Roger Bossard. Bossard is the head groundskeeper at U.S. Cellular Field. In his 41 seasons, he’s developed trick after trick to ensure that his club’s home-field advantage is, in fact, as advantageous it can possibly get. In the series’ first two games, on Tropicana Field’s fast artificial turf, the young and athletic Rays made the White Sox seem inexorably plodding; the Rays took extra base after extra base, often several at a time, while the Sox couldn’t do much more than advance station-to-station and wait for a big blow that never came. They stranded 12 baserunners in Friday’s Game 2 as a result. Bossard’s job, then, was to slow the speedy Rays with a few extra scoops of dirt and a few extra squirts from his hose — to better enable the Sox to win the game by doing what they do best: mashing the ball over the fence, which they did 235 times during the regular season, 21 more than any other team.

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