Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Joe Sullivan
April 08, 2024 | Baseball, #ForBoston Files
Commitment to service remains a huge piece of the Birdball fabric.
Boston College looked like world-beaters for the first six innings of Sunday afternoon. A baseball team that lost the opening game of the weekend held a 2-1 lead over No. 14 Florida State after winning Saturday to even the series, and an upset possibility cleanly hung in the air. Starting pitcher A.J. Colarusso spun a no-hitter into the fifth inning before the Seminoles dinged him for their first run, and manufactured runs had the visiting team on its heels in a matchup that felt like it would critically damage its slot as a possible host site.
The emotion felt like baseball's version of a street corner fight and garnered respect from every corner of the country, and while FSU eventually punched through BC with crooked numbers in the seventh and eighth innings, the Eagles found their way into wounding the powerhouse with magic provided by the Harrington Athletics Village faithful.
In short, it was one of those weekends that Pete Frates would have loved, and while BC dropped Sunday's game and lost the series to one of the Atlantic Coast Conference's resurgent powerhouses, what was accomplished off the field during the team's Red Bandanna Weekend somehow still went beyond the on-field exploits that enhanced the overarching message of a team fighting for something bigger.
"You knew that Welles was tied to Boston College," said head coach Todd Interdonato, "and with baseball, [everyone] knows about Pete Frates. Those are two people that you become acutely aware of, and the fact that we get to represent the two of them is really cool."
One of Boston College's greatest traditions centers on how its athletics teams celebrate the story of Welles Crowther. It's newer compared to decades-old stories embedded throughout the university, but retelling how "The Man In The Red Bandanna" saved more than a dozen people during the tragic and horrific events of September 11, 2001 never fails to generate a conversation.
It perfectly aligns with the university's overall mission of "men and women for others," but it's even more clearly parallel to the totem installed in the BC baseball program's commitment to destroying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. More commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," the degenerative disease impacted Birdball deeply after Pete Frates, a 2007 graduate of the program, announced his diagnosis in 2012, at which point the Eagles introduced an ALS Awareness Game that quickly became a staple game played at Fenway Park.
"[The ALS Awareness Game] is a special day and we knew that coming in," said pitcher John West after last year's game at Fenway, which he started and won against Notre Dame. "[Former head coach Mike Gambino] grabbed me pregame and said, 'Look, I know how much this night means to you, so soak it in during the pregame and the postgame. When that light comes on, I know you're going to get the job done.' It was an emotional day, but I was just [glad] I could get the job done."
West's father passed away following his own battle with ALS, but the pitcher took the mound last year while simultaneously wearing the No. 8 awarded in memory of former Eagle Sonny Nictakis and a patch on the front of his uniform indicating his receipt of the team's red bandanna representation. Beyond the No. 3 spread throughout the stadium for Frates or the No. 8 on his back for Nictakis, West had the No. 19 on the front of his jersey in memory of Welles.
Those details kept conversations moving, and this past weekend combined the baseball program's overall mission. Frates passed away in 2019, but his commitment and dedication to defeating ALS generated an estimated $220 million after 2014's Ice Bucket Challenge exploded onto viral social media. Its success was instrumental in developing new treatments and technologies to slow the disease's progression while simultaneously improving the quality of life of those diagnosed, and the identification and discovery of a gene associated with ALS helped unlock more hope for a cure.
Much of that is pieced into every Boston College baseball game, but conflating that story onto the same track as the red bandanna offers logical fits for further conversation about serving others in the community because the accents on the batting gloves and on the hats holds some of the purest tokens of the university's mission. None of it is taken lightly, and donning it for the first time struck a chord for people who weren't closely associated with Crowther or what he did in the face of an immense tragedy.
"I was living in North Carolina on September 11, 2001," said Interdonato, "and the story quickly came out about the 'man in the red bandanna.' It was 20-plus years ago in North Carolina, but we all [remember it], and you couldn't read enough about it. There wasn't enough to read about, and that story started to come about [about Welles]. In 2017, we took our team [at Wofford] to play at Villanova, and we took a special trip [to New York City] to go through the 9/11 museum, and that story was there."
Twenty-plus years have passed since Crowther was pressed into service during the last hours of his life, and this past December marked four years since Pete Frates passed away. The lacrosse program ceased in the early 2000s, and nobody within the Birdball program remembers the personal interactions with Frates. Time continues its interminable march to a time when their stories won't have first-hand interactions or recollections.
Yet both are forever remembered because their stories represent the best of Boston College's mission, and weekends like a three-game series against Florida State, even ones played under suboptimal weather conditions, continue their story and the commitment to recall the ultimate sacrifices of people like them.
The emotion felt like baseball's version of a street corner fight and garnered respect from every corner of the country, and while FSU eventually punched through BC with crooked numbers in the seventh and eighth innings, the Eagles found their way into wounding the powerhouse with magic provided by the Harrington Athletics Village faithful.
In short, it was one of those weekends that Pete Frates would have loved, and while BC dropped Sunday's game and lost the series to one of the Atlantic Coast Conference's resurgent powerhouses, what was accomplished off the field during the team's Red Bandanna Weekend somehow still went beyond the on-field exploits that enhanced the overarching message of a team fighting for something bigger.
"You knew that Welles was tied to Boston College," said head coach Todd Interdonato, "and with baseball, [everyone] knows about Pete Frates. Those are two people that you become acutely aware of, and the fact that we get to represent the two of them is really cool."
One of Boston College's greatest traditions centers on how its athletics teams celebrate the story of Welles Crowther. It's newer compared to decades-old stories embedded throughout the university, but retelling how "The Man In The Red Bandanna" saved more than a dozen people during the tragic and horrific events of September 11, 2001 never fails to generate a conversation.
It perfectly aligns with the university's overall mission of "men and women for others," but it's even more clearly parallel to the totem installed in the BC baseball program's commitment to destroying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. More commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," the degenerative disease impacted Birdball deeply after Pete Frates, a 2007 graduate of the program, announced his diagnosis in 2012, at which point the Eagles introduced an ALS Awareness Game that quickly became a staple game played at Fenway Park.
"[The ALS Awareness Game] is a special day and we knew that coming in," said pitcher John West after last year's game at Fenway, which he started and won against Notre Dame. "[Former head coach Mike Gambino] grabbed me pregame and said, 'Look, I know how much this night means to you, so soak it in during the pregame and the postgame. When that light comes on, I know you're going to get the job done.' It was an emotional day, but I was just [glad] I could get the job done."
West's father passed away following his own battle with ALS, but the pitcher took the mound last year while simultaneously wearing the No. 8 awarded in memory of former Eagle Sonny Nictakis and a patch on the front of his uniform indicating his receipt of the team's red bandanna representation. Beyond the No. 3 spread throughout the stadium for Frates or the No. 8 on his back for Nictakis, West had the No. 19 on the front of his jersey in memory of Welles.
Those details kept conversations moving, and this past weekend combined the baseball program's overall mission. Frates passed away in 2019, but his commitment and dedication to defeating ALS generated an estimated $220 million after 2014's Ice Bucket Challenge exploded onto viral social media. Its success was instrumental in developing new treatments and technologies to slow the disease's progression while simultaneously improving the quality of life of those diagnosed, and the identification and discovery of a gene associated with ALS helped unlock more hope for a cure.
Much of that is pieced into every Boston College baseball game, but conflating that story onto the same track as the red bandanna offers logical fits for further conversation about serving others in the community because the accents on the batting gloves and on the hats holds some of the purest tokens of the university's mission. None of it is taken lightly, and donning it for the first time struck a chord for people who weren't closely associated with Crowther or what he did in the face of an immense tragedy.
"I was living in North Carolina on September 11, 2001," said Interdonato, "and the story quickly came out about the 'man in the red bandanna.' It was 20-plus years ago in North Carolina, but we all [remember it], and you couldn't read enough about it. There wasn't enough to read about, and that story started to come about [about Welles]. In 2017, we took our team [at Wofford] to play at Villanova, and we took a special trip [to New York City] to go through the 9/11 museum, and that story was there."
Twenty-plus years have passed since Crowther was pressed into service during the last hours of his life, and this past December marked four years since Pete Frates passed away. The lacrosse program ceased in the early 2000s, and nobody within the Birdball program remembers the personal interactions with Frates. Time continues its interminable march to a time when their stories won't have first-hand interactions or recollections.
Yet both are forever remembered because their stories represent the best of Boston College's mission, and weekends like a three-game series against Florida State, even ones played under suboptimal weather conditions, continue their story and the commitment to recall the ultimate sacrifices of people like them.
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