BC Baseball: Pete Frates Day Declared in Boston

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Pete Frates Day Declared in Boston

The BC baseball team and other gathered to celebrate the former captain

BOSTON, Mass. – The Boston College baseball team joined a celebration for Pete Frates on the steps of Boston’s city hall on Tuesday afternoon as Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh honored the former captain Pete Frates by declaring it Pete Frates Day.

“It is impossible to overstate the impact Pete Frates has made on our city, especially the youth of our city,” Mayor Walsh said. “We teach kids about character and courage and we look for role models for them to understand. Here in Boston and certainly in Massachusetts, we don’t need to point to heroes in movies or storybooks because we are lucky enough to have a real-life, home-town hero in our midst – the great Pete Frates.”

Along with Frates, his family and the Eagles, co-authors of The Ice Bucket Challenge: Pete Frates and the Fight against ALS Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy and Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner spoke at the event. Members of the BC marching band, spirit squad and BC’s mascot Baldwin were also in attendance.

Said Kennedy, “Steve Buckley – a columnist for the Boston Herald – wrote a column July 6 in which he proclaimed that Pete Frates is the most important athlete in Boston sports history for what he has done for people with ALS. I want to agree with Steve Buckley and acknowledge that Pete belongs on the Mount Rushmore with Larry Bird, David Ortiz, Bobby Orr, Tom Brady and all the greats. For the courage and the fearless nature which you have attacked this disease, we are all in awe of you Pete.”

The event coincided with the release of the new book. Fifty percent of the book proceeds goes directly to Frates and his family.

“Thank you all for celebrating with our family today,” Nancy Frates, Pete’s mother, said. “Pete and our family have received many, many beautiful honors, but the best honor – the most powerful reward – is that what we have been given is the real promise that no other family…ever have to have the beast ALS take their loved one.”

Frates was the catalyst behind the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which has raised more than $220 million for ALS research since 2014. It is considered the greatest social media charity campaign in history. In the spring of 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that treatments were approved to slow down the progression of ALS, showing the direct impact of the social media campaign.

The former Eagle was presented with the 2017 NCAA Inspiration Award in December 2016 and the following spring, the bucket he used for his own Ice Bucket Challenge at Fenway Park that fateful summer, along with memorabilia from his playing days at Boston College, were donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The Eagles retired Frates’ No. 3 at Shea Field on May 7, 2016. To learn more about Frates’s story, visit www.petefrates.com.

Frates’ book is available at all major book sellers and online.