The entire travel party crowded together for that snapshot, but their centerpiece wasn’t the trophy captured from the wins over Tulane or Utah. Instead, a maroon flag emblazoned with a white ribbon and gold lettering grabbed the attention in homage to the one person who wasn’t on that trip: Pete Frates.
Through its unstated message, honoring Frates encapsulated the greater mission of a team refusing to wave its own white flag on the field. Birdball and the very culture constructed around the very public directive to find a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – ALS, the disease robbing Frates of his physical well-being – remained at the forefront.
Ten years later, the same flag from BC’s 2016 and 2023 NCAA Tournaments heads to Athens, Georgia for the latest journey in a mission that only ends when ALS is relegated to the history books as a thing of the past.
“Anytime Birdball can get on the national stage, we always want to put Pete and his mission out in front,” said head coach Todd Interdonato during BC’s travel day to Georgia. “The 2026 team truly believes that Pete is one of their teammates, and he’s been with us throughout this incredible season.”
Once known colloquially as Lou Gehrig’s Disease after the New York Yankee legend’s public battle in the late-1930s and early-1940s, ALS is a progressive disease in which the human brain loses its connection with its muscles. Its cruel evolution gradually robs a person of their ability to walk, talk, eat and eventually breathe while never touching the mind’s ability to think, with its average survival time from diagnosis lasting approximately three years. Per the ALS Association’s statistics, approximately 20 percent of people live five years or more with the numbers halving for 10-year and again for 20-year intervals.
Part of the challenge stems from its shadowy ability to evade a true diagnosis. Early symptoms that begin in the hands or feet are easily ignorable because the average muscle twitch or tripping incident is occasionally negligible, and as a result, there is no single test that confirms ALS. Instead, its position as a “rule-out” disease translates to diagnosis only after the body begins progressing into its initial stages.
Frates received his diagnosis in March, 2012 after first noticing symptoms in late-2011. Just 27 years old, he was barely removed from playing for the Boston College baseball program during the team’s transition to the Atlantic Coast Conference. The two-time team home run leader, he’d delivered the team to within shouting distance of the ACC Championship tournament as a senior while laying the foundation for the team’s eventual run to the 2009 national tournament, and his home run against Harvard during the 2006 Beanpot propelled the Eagles during a trophy-clinching victory at Fenway Park.
The thought of watching that player gradually and rapidly decline in a losing battle against ALS was completely unfathomable, and it struck at the core of BC’s greater mission of “men and women for others.” Almost immediately, the Eagles embraced Frates and brought him back within the fold of the program as the team’s director of baseball operations, and he routinely joined them in the dugout and on the road before his physical abilities relegated him to wheelchairs and home care.
None of this, though, prepared BC and the greater ALS community for Pete’s stated goal of curing ALS. In 2014, news of a story involving a golfer named Chris Kennedy dumping a bucket of cold water over his head as a way to bring cheer to a family member with ALS reached Frates and Pat Quinn. Inspired by the story, they participated in challenging friends and family to dump themselves with a bucket of ice water before both making a donation and challenging three additional people. Those three people then performed the stunt while challenging three additional people.
Within months, the Ice Bucket Challenge spread to the highest levels of world awareness. Superstar athletes, including BC graduates, participated, but the challenge reached former presidents, prime ministers and movie stars. By the end of the summer, the viral action raised well north of $200 million through the engagement of 17 million people.
That money directly impacted breakthroughs in ALS research. Radicava, a drug capable of slowing the disease’s progression, gained approval in 2017 as the first treatment option since the 1980s, and further research began unlocking secrets of genetic mutations and potential risk-associated causations.
“It was really just an awareness campaign,” said John Frates, Pete’s father, during a 2024 interview with CBS News. “And then it morphed into a fundraiser, and what a massive fundraiser [with] $220 million worldwide. [Pete] told his doctor that he would get the billion dollars [for research]. I laughed in his face because we’re a modest family – how is that going to happen? And sure enough, as I’m standing here, they just announced one billion.”
Back at BC, the steadfast commitment to find a cure for ALS didn’t stop as the years progressed. Frates passed away in 2019, and assistant coach Greg Sullivan is the last remaining Birdball member who got to see, touch and speak to Pete. The incoming players were barely into their elementary school years when the Ice Bucket Challenge occurred, and the members of the program’s support staff and administration turned over with the natural passage of time.
That’s perhaps why it’s most critical for the team to continue dedicating itself to this mission. The flag that flew in in the 2016 dugout when players spoke directly to Pete remained with BC when Shrewsbury, Mass. native John West, who lost his dad to ALS, pitched the Eagles to victory in an emotional 2023 ALS Awareness Game at Fenway Park on the last day of the season. It traveled to Alabama’s Tuscaloosa Regional and returned for annual appearances and first pitches by Pete’s daughter Lucy, now approaching her teenage years, at the intersection of Jersey and Landsdowne.
The hope is to eradicate the insidious beast and monster that continues ravaging warriors and families, and prayers look forward to the day when ALS Awareness Games are no longer needed. In the meantime, there’s still the BC baseball team and its Birdball culture – and its mission to bring ALS awareness to a stadium and a national audience that’s still hungry for breakthroughs and miracles.
“As we continue forward, we will always continue the fight that Pete started,” said Interdonato. “We’re going to live out his legacy spent fighting against ALS.”
Boston College plays Liberty in Friday’s first game of the 2026 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament’s Athens Regional. First pitch is scheduled for 2 p.m. with television coverage available through the ESPN+ streaming service that’s available through the network’s family of Internet and mobile device apps.
