Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Joe Sullivan
April 26, 2024 | Baseball, #ForBoston Files
Saturday gives BC a chance to clinch a series win over Virginia after Thursday's Fenway Park victory.
Griff O'Ferrall's career numbers rank him among the University of Virginia's most renowned hitters. The career .347 hitter is poking towards numbers reserved for former Cavaliers like Ryan Zimmerman or Jeff Musser, and the Preseason All-America selection spent most of last summer in the conversation for the upcoming MLB Draft after spending the offseason as a member of the Team USA Collegiate National Team. His accolades include finalist recognition - the first of its kind for the Virginia program - for the Brooks Wallace Award as the best shortstop in the country, and one of the best hitters in the ACC already holds program records for hits and runs scored.Â
His .320 batting average through the first 40-plus games of this season don't measure up to last year's torrid numbers, but the first pitch of Thursday's series opener against Boston College offered O'Ferrall the opportunity for something not presented in an analytic or statistic. He was a player who very well might return to Boston one day in a Major League Baseball uniform, but on Thursday night, the leadoff hitter against starting pitcher A.J. Colarusso uncorked a hard fly ball to left field that would have provided him with a lifetime memory.
The swing would have been a routine out at BC's Harrington Athletics Village field in Brighton, but BC and Virginia moved their first game to baseball's holiest cathedral and played the Eagles' 12th annual ALS Awareness Game at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. On that first pitch, the 310-foot liner to left sent Cameron Leary closer to a manual, metal scoreboard than anyone expected, and while he flew out, it made clear that the game wasn't just another game on either team's schedule.
A cloudless night offered utterly perfect conditions for baseball, but the aftermath of a three-plus hour marathon found a Virginia team bound for the NCAA Tournament running smack into a repurposed BC team that played with heart and guts through a split on Thursday and Friday ahead of Saturday's rubber match, back home in Brighton.
"Their offense is maybe one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous, offense in the country," said head coach Todd Interdonato. "As we got into the night [on Thursday], I asked how odd it was that they were getting to their fifth time through the lineup with one run on the board. It just came down to getting off the field with two outs [because] they had their chances and created their chances."
BC's trip to Notre Dame over last weekend shrouded the team's bid for a second consecutive national tournament. A team previously listed on either side of the bubble conversation moved its way into the field of 64 teams by winning individual games against Florida State and Wake Forest after sweeping Georgia Tech, and a midweek win over Connecticut for the second time this year righted the listing water absorbed by two losses to Northeastern. The Eagles remained on pace for 30-plus wins, and two of their final three weekend conference series were at home after the three-game trip to South Bend.
Notre Dame was a last place team situated at the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference's Atlantic Division, but in a twist of fate, the Eagles surrendered all three games played on the Fighting Irish's fabled Frank Eck Stadium turf. Two of the games never advanced past the seventh inning because of their blowout nature, and the third game, a 13-0 shutout loss, failed to generate a hit for an offense that inserted a returning Barry Walsh into a lineup already teeming with top-flight power hitters.
It was, in Interdonato's words, "the worst weekend of my career," and it left the Eagles in need of a spark for their weekend series against Virginia, a 30-win team listed as high as ninth in the national tournament conversation. The team didn't have a midweek game with Fenway scheduled for Thursday, but playing its ALS Awareness Game seemed to inject different life into the Eagles by the time first pitch against the Wahoos finally rolled into full view.
"We tried to come up with the best process possible," Interdonato admitted. "Monday was our off-day, but on Tuesday and Wednesday, we were really meticulous about what we did, what we said, and what we practiced. There were a couple of guys that said it, that we were getting to play at Fenway Park and getting to play the ALS game, and it just shifted our focus and our mind to do our part."
Their part was something greater than the baseball community ever fathomed. For years, Boston College stood at the forefront of the sport's commitment to tackling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative neurological disease that slowly robs its patients of their overall motor skills. Commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, it has no cure even as it never impacts a person's mind or spirit, meaning those diagnosed were forced to live their final days with a full understanding of how ALS robbed them of their abilities to walk, move, talk, and chew.
Former Eagle captain Pete Frates was diagnosed with the disease in 2012, and he became an icon as the face of the fight against ALS after his Ice Bucket Challenge became a cultural and viral phenomenon in 2014. It helped raise over $200 million for research that eventually unlocked several secrets of how ALS attacked the body and developed new treatments, but his passing in 2019 ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic left his legacy and story unfinished without a cure as the people who knew or remembered Pete's presence slowly departed the program over time.
"I've said it a number of times," Interdonato said, "but we felt like we needed [Pete's parents] John and Nancy's blessing to carry this torch. We needed their permission to fully embrace this, and the fact that we got it during my first week here at BC, they gave us their blessing with open arms. The conversations we've had since then makes it feel more wholesome, so being able to come here [to BC], I felt a great sense of responsibility [to continue the ALS Awareness Game]."
It's easy to forget how much the ALS Awareness Game means to the BC program because the players and coaches don't carry the same links to Frates' past, but extending the goal to the team's new regime continued Birdball's overall fight to create a permanent legacy around curing and defeating ALS. Playing at Fenway Park allowed the Eagles to renew their sense of purpose, and finding that purpose for something greater - the responsibility associated with bringing Pete's enduring message to the masses - was present in the intensity that once again appeared for a team that enters Saturday with an opportunity to clinch a series against a top-10 team.
"You can't draw it up better," Interdonato said. "Parker [Landwehr] hit one into the bullpen, and Vince Cimini snuck a ball around the Pesky Pole. Pitching the way that we did, defending the way we did, opening up the score the way we did, on this stage and in this environment. Not all games are the same, but this was an amazing night. For us to experience this for the first time with our staff and this team and my family, you can't draw it up any better."
BC and Virginia play the third game of their series on Saturday afternoon at 12:30 p.m. from the Harrington Athletics Village in Brighton, Massachusetts. The game can be seen via the ACC Network Extra, which is available on ESPN's family of Internet and mobile device apps for cable subscribers with access to the channel.
His .320 batting average through the first 40-plus games of this season don't measure up to last year's torrid numbers, but the first pitch of Thursday's series opener against Boston College offered O'Ferrall the opportunity for something not presented in an analytic or statistic. He was a player who very well might return to Boston one day in a Major League Baseball uniform, but on Thursday night, the leadoff hitter against starting pitcher A.J. Colarusso uncorked a hard fly ball to left field that would have provided him with a lifetime memory.
The swing would have been a routine out at BC's Harrington Athletics Village field in Brighton, but BC and Virginia moved their first game to baseball's holiest cathedral and played the Eagles' 12th annual ALS Awareness Game at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. On that first pitch, the 310-foot liner to left sent Cameron Leary closer to a manual, metal scoreboard than anyone expected, and while he flew out, it made clear that the game wasn't just another game on either team's schedule.
A cloudless night offered utterly perfect conditions for baseball, but the aftermath of a three-plus hour marathon found a Virginia team bound for the NCAA Tournament running smack into a repurposed BC team that played with heart and guts through a split on Thursday and Friday ahead of Saturday's rubber match, back home in Brighton.
"Their offense is maybe one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous, offense in the country," said head coach Todd Interdonato. "As we got into the night [on Thursday], I asked how odd it was that they were getting to their fifth time through the lineup with one run on the board. It just came down to getting off the field with two outs [because] they had their chances and created their chances."
BC's trip to Notre Dame over last weekend shrouded the team's bid for a second consecutive national tournament. A team previously listed on either side of the bubble conversation moved its way into the field of 64 teams by winning individual games against Florida State and Wake Forest after sweeping Georgia Tech, and a midweek win over Connecticut for the second time this year righted the listing water absorbed by two losses to Northeastern. The Eagles remained on pace for 30-plus wins, and two of their final three weekend conference series were at home after the three-game trip to South Bend.
Notre Dame was a last place team situated at the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference's Atlantic Division, but in a twist of fate, the Eagles surrendered all three games played on the Fighting Irish's fabled Frank Eck Stadium turf. Two of the games never advanced past the seventh inning because of their blowout nature, and the third game, a 13-0 shutout loss, failed to generate a hit for an offense that inserted a returning Barry Walsh into a lineup already teeming with top-flight power hitters.
It was, in Interdonato's words, "the worst weekend of my career," and it left the Eagles in need of a spark for their weekend series against Virginia, a 30-win team listed as high as ninth in the national tournament conversation. The team didn't have a midweek game with Fenway scheduled for Thursday, but playing its ALS Awareness Game seemed to inject different life into the Eagles by the time first pitch against the Wahoos finally rolled into full view.
"We tried to come up with the best process possible," Interdonato admitted. "Monday was our off-day, but on Tuesday and Wednesday, we were really meticulous about what we did, what we said, and what we practiced. There were a couple of guys that said it, that we were getting to play at Fenway Park and getting to play the ALS game, and it just shifted our focus and our mind to do our part."
Their part was something greater than the baseball community ever fathomed. For years, Boston College stood at the forefront of the sport's commitment to tackling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative neurological disease that slowly robs its patients of their overall motor skills. Commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, it has no cure even as it never impacts a person's mind or spirit, meaning those diagnosed were forced to live their final days with a full understanding of how ALS robbed them of their abilities to walk, move, talk, and chew.
Former Eagle captain Pete Frates was diagnosed with the disease in 2012, and he became an icon as the face of the fight against ALS after his Ice Bucket Challenge became a cultural and viral phenomenon in 2014. It helped raise over $200 million for research that eventually unlocked several secrets of how ALS attacked the body and developed new treatments, but his passing in 2019 ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic left his legacy and story unfinished without a cure as the people who knew or remembered Pete's presence slowly departed the program over time.
"I've said it a number of times," Interdonato said, "but we felt like we needed [Pete's parents] John and Nancy's blessing to carry this torch. We needed their permission to fully embrace this, and the fact that we got it during my first week here at BC, they gave us their blessing with open arms. The conversations we've had since then makes it feel more wholesome, so being able to come here [to BC], I felt a great sense of responsibility [to continue the ALS Awareness Game]."
It's easy to forget how much the ALS Awareness Game means to the BC program because the players and coaches don't carry the same links to Frates' past, but extending the goal to the team's new regime continued Birdball's overall fight to create a permanent legacy around curing and defeating ALS. Playing at Fenway Park allowed the Eagles to renew their sense of purpose, and finding that purpose for something greater - the responsibility associated with bringing Pete's enduring message to the masses - was present in the intensity that once again appeared for a team that enters Saturday with an opportunity to clinch a series against a top-10 team.
"You can't draw it up better," Interdonato said. "Parker [Landwehr] hit one into the bullpen, and Vince Cimini snuck a ball around the Pesky Pole. Pitching the way that we did, defending the way we did, opening up the score the way we did, on this stage and in this environment. Not all games are the same, but this was an amazing night. For us to experience this for the first time with our staff and this team and my family, you can't draw it up any better."
BC and Virginia play the third game of their series on Saturday afternoon at 12:30 p.m. from the Harrington Athletics Village in Brighton, Massachusetts. The game can be seen via the ACC Network Extra, which is available on ESPN's family of Internet and mobile device apps for cable subscribers with access to the channel.
Players Mentioned
Friday, October 23
Friday, October 23
Thursday, October 22
Thursday, October 22
