Boston College Athletics
History Of Baseball At The Heights
January 24, 2002 | Baseball
1870: The first-ever record of baseball at the Heights was in 1870, when students played an interclass game Miller's field in Roxbury.
1914: Leo Holleran recorded Boston College's first no-hitter on May 31, 1914 as the Eagles defeated Connecticut 11-0 in Storrs.
1915: The Eagles defeat Georgetown 5-4 on April 29, 1915 for its inaugural home win.
1917: Tom Gildea spent two years as player/manager before taking control of the reigns after his graduation from Boston College in 1917.
1917: Louis J. Urban, one of the few four-sport stars ever at Boston College, batted around .400.
1923: Frankie Wilson set an intercollegiate record, hitting safely in 27 straight games and finished the year hitting .450. The Eagles won 21-consecutive games to finish the season with a 30-2 record.
1923: More than 30,000 fans filled Braves Field on June 18, 1923 to see Boston College beat Holy Cross 4-1 and take the series 2-1 to win the Eastern Title. The three-game series between the top-ranked Crusaders and the second-ranked Eagles drew a combined 83,000 spectators.
1928: Hugh Duffy was the best former major-leaguer to coach at the Heights (1928-30). Duffy was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (1945) after a 17-year, six-team playing career with a lifelong batting average of .324.
1929: The 1929 team was one of he best hitting teams in the nation as well as having one of the most potent lineups in BC history, featuring 10 hitters with batting averages over .300 (including George Colbert, who led the inter-collegiate league).
1931: BC beat Hosei University from Japan, 9-1.
1935: The schedule included games against BC alumni - who beat the varsity behind the pitching of Coach Frank "Cheese" McCrehan - Harvard alumni, and a Knights of Columbus team from New York.
1939: May 13, 1939 - Boston College was chosen to play Fordham in the "Centennial Game" at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to mark 100 years of baseball.
1944: BC was unable to field a baseball team through 1946 due to the military draft and call-ups in World War II.
1947: Jimmy Fitzpatrick, also the quarterback of the football team, pitched a no-hitter against the University of Maine.
1949: The Eagles received an invitation to the NCAA Division I tournament, the first of nine invitations which would bring them back in 1953, 1955, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966 and 1967.
1953: Boston College advances to the NCAA College World Series in Omaha. The Eagles would return to Nebraska in 1960, 1961 and 1967.
1959: Coach Eddie Pellagrini led the Eagles to 11-consecutive winning seasons starting in 1959, a stretch that included three trips to the College World Series.
1967: In the bottom of the sixth inning in the 1967 NCAA Division I playoff game, Boston College sent 15 men to the plate, scoring 10 runs to tie the game against Dartmouth. Mike Robertson capped off the amazing comeback in the eighth inning with the game-winning home run (15-13).
1999: Boston College set a school record of 26 wins. Fourteen Eagles hit over .300, to compile the nation's second-best batting average (.354). BC also ranked ninth in slugging percentage (.560), 14th in homeruns (77) and 14th in scoring (9.04). First baseman Sean McGowan posted 25 home runs, second in the country, while batting .430 (11th). He was the highest-ever BC draft pick, going in the third round to the San Francisco Giants.
2000: The Eagles bettered their school-record with a 35-20-0 mark, including third-place in its second-ever BIG EAST tournament appearance. Four Eagles (Steve Langone, Mike Gambino, Joe Kealty and Neal McCarthy) received All-BIG EAST honors. Pitcher Steve Langone led the country with 1.54 ERA. Mike Gambino and Mike Hubbard combined to post the nation's sixth-place best numbers in double plays, averaging 1.24 per game.
BC Coaching History Coach Year(s) James Driscoll 5 1908-1912 Tom Scanlon 1 1913 Joe Monahan 3 1914-1916 Tom Gildea 3.5 1917-1920 "Doc" White .5 1920 Tom McCarthy 1 1920-1921 Olaf Henriksen 3 1922-1924 Jack Slattery 3 1925-1927 Hugh Duffy $ 3 1928-1930 Frank McCrehan 8 1931-1938 Fred Maguire 9 1939-1943, 1946-1949 John Temple 8 1950-1957 Eddie Pellagrini * 30 1958-1968, 1970-1988 Bill Cunis @ 1 1969 Richard "Moe" Maloney 10 1989-1998 Pete Hughes 2 1999-Present
$ Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945 * National Collegiate Coaches Hall of Fame inductee @ In Pellagrini's absence
