Wolfpack finally returns to Fenway Park, and for a good cause

When head coach Elliott Avent takes his baseball team to Boston College in late April, one of its three games in Beantown will be played at Fenway Park, home of major league baseball’s Boston Red Sox. The game, slated for 4 p.m., April 22, will serve as a benefit for the Pete Frates Fund, named in honor of a former Boston College centerfielder and team captain.

It’s a game that will further bind two programs brought together by a common enemy.

Frates, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2012, became famous a few years ago for starting the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise awareness and funds for ALS research.

The rare neurological disorder has also hit close to home at NC State, where former baseball star and current Wolfpack Club associate director Chris Combs was recently diagnosed with the same disease that affected family friend Jim “Catfish” Hunter, famed New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig and his teammate Kemp Wicker of Kernersville, a former pitcher at NC State and member of three Yankees World Series teams.

Combs worked with Boston College head coach Mike Gambino to organize the game, which will be played on the same day as The Walk To Defeat ALS, a local fundraiser in Raleigh to benefit the North Carolina chapter of the ALS Association. Combs has organized a team to participate in the event.

Eventually, Combs would like to see similar benefit games sweep through amateur and college baseball, the same way women’s basketball and other sports followed the lead of late NC State women’s coach and Hall of Fame inductee Kay Yow with fundraisers called “Play 4 Kay” benefitting breast cancer research.

Amazingly, it will be just the second time in NC State baseball history that the Wolfpack will play in a major league stadium. The Wolfpack beat Minnesota 10-6 in the now-departed Metrodome in Minneapolis in 1996.

But it won’t be the first time an NC State team has played in Fenway, home of the Green Monster, the Pesky Pole and the Jimmy Fund.

In 1936, in the final of his three years at NC State, football coach Hunk Anderson took his Wolfpack squad to face Boston College at Fenway, in the first meeting of the now Atlantic Coast Conference members.

That season, Boston College split its eight home football games between Fenway and Alumni Stadium. It was the first year that college football returned to Fenway after a 1927 fire destroyed the wooden grandstands. Renovations began in 1934 after Tom Yawkey Jr. bought the team.

Like Reynolds Coliseum on NC State’s campus and the PNC Arena by the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, Fenway Park was originally intended to be a multipurpose facility that hosted all kinds of events, including baseball, professional wrestling, boxing and football. From 1933-36, Fenway was home to the Boston Redskins, and from 1961-68, it was the home of the Boston Patriots. Two-time NC State All-American defensive lineman Dennis Byrd, first-round pick of the American Football League’s Boston Patriots in 1968, played his rookie season in Fenway.

When the Wolfpack and Eagles met in 1936, Anderson faced future College Football Hall of Fame inductee “Gloomy” Gil Dobie, who had won three national championships during his time at Cornell. It was the first of his three seasons with the Eagles.

The Wolfpack entered the game with a 3-3 record, having just lost to rival North Carolina the week before. More importantly, the team was reeling with the loss of three of its best players, Howard Bardes, Jess Tatum and Odell Smothers, who had been dismissed “in the best interest of the team and the school as a whole.”

So the team was a bit down when it boarded its overnight train in Raleigh that Thursday evening for a return trip to the North. Earlier in the season, the Wolfpack faced Manhattan at Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, losing 13-6

The Eagles were heavily favored, but the game came down to a pair of misplayed punts. As NC State students back at home watched play telegraphed from Boston on the Grid Graph in Pullen Hall, the Wolfpack took a 3-0 lead in the first half when back Mac Cara covered a fumbled punt on the Eagles’ 12-yard line. The Wolfpack failed to advance from there, however, settling for a 25-yard field goal from quarterback/kicker Charlie Gadd.

In the second half, the Eagles covered a fumbled punt by State’s Eddie Berlinsky at the 12-yard line and converted the game’s only touchdown on a pass, securing a 12-7 win. Earlier in the game, Berlinsky set up another potential Wolfpack score with a 60-yard punt return, but it was called back for holding.

The Wolfpack gridders returned to Raleigh and finished out a 3-7 record with losses to Orange Bowl-champion Catholic College in Washington, 7-6, and Southern Conference champions Duke, 13-0.

The trips to Fenway and Ebbet’s were not the Wolfpack’s only games in major league parks. In 1938, the Pack faced Manhattan in Yankee Stadium and in 1967 it played No. 2 Houston in the Astrodome. It has made several bowl trips to major league parks, including Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium for the Peach Bowl, the Astrodome for the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl, Joe Robbie Stadium for the MicronPC and the MicronPC.com bowls and Tropicana Field for the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.

One other NC State team went to Fenway Park not long ago. In 2012, making its first trip to Boston College for a three-game ACC series, the NC State softball team toured Fenway before its first game. The trip ended badly, however, when former coach Lisa Navas casually mentioned in the souvenir shop that one of her outfielders named Caitlin was the daughter of former New York Yankees shortstop (and Hunter teammate) Bucky Dent, home run villain of the 1978 playoff game between the Red Sox and the Yankees.

Memories are long in Beantown.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.