Game at Fenway Carries Special Meaning for Whalen

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A game at Fenway Park awaits the University of Virginia baseball team, which plays ACC rival Boston College at that storied stadium on Thursday night. That alone would make this a memorable road trip for the 14^th-ranked Cavaliers, but for outfielder Bobby Whalen, the occasion carries additional meaning.

The opener of the three-game series between UVA (31-11, 12-9) and Boston College (20-19, 7-14) is the 12^th annual ALS Awareness Game. BC hosts this game every year in memory one of its former baseball standouts, Pete Frates, who was diagnosed in 2012 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and died in 2019.

Whalen, who’s from Camp Hill, Pa., near Harrisburg, knew nothing about ALS, until his best friend’s father was diagnosed in 2010 with the disease, which affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Tom Kirchhoff died of ALS in 2015, and two years later Whalen and his buddy Tommy Kirchhoff launched a fundraiser to benefit Project ALS, an organization that supports research aimed at finding a cure for the disease.

Whalen was a junior at Cedar Cliff High and Tommy Kirchhoff was a senior at nearby Trinity High. Both played quarterback in football, and each wore jersey No. 14, as Tom Kirchhoff had when he starred at Cedar Cliff.

The fundraiser, called We Will W1N 4 ALS, raised about $250,000, with donations pledged for every touchdown Whalen and Tommy Kirchhoff scored during the 2017 season. A year later, after Tommy Kirchhoff graduated from Trinity, Whalen led another fund drive that pushed the total raised for Project ALS to about $280,000.

“It was such a touching moment in high school when we did that,” Whalen said Tuesday night at Disharoon Park.

Whalen said he’s excited about the game at Fenway, which “spreads awareness and raises money for something that I care so much about and saw people suffer through.”

He transferred to UVA after graduating from Indiana University last spring. A standout center-fielder for the Hoosiers, he’s been even better for the Cavaliers. In a 14-4 run-rule victory over Liberty, Whalen went 2-for-3, with two RBI, to raise his batting average to .404.

One of those hits was a home run, his first as a Cavalier.

“It was a good feeling,” Whalen said. “People have been joking around with me a lot about not having any home run, so it was nice to finally get one.”

Whalen, whose walk-off single in the 11^th inning Saturday lifted Virginia to victory over Georgia Tech, did a little bit of everything Tuesday night at the Dish.

In the first inning, after singling and then stealing second, he scored from second on a wild pitch, showing off impressive speed. In the second, his two-run home run put the Hoos ahead to stay. In the fifth, Whalen saved at least one run with a diving catch in center field, and in the sixth he made a difficult running catch at the warning track.

“It’s been everything I could have hoped for,” Whalen said of his UVA experience. “Just the teammates, the coaches, the way we’re performing. It’s a dream come true.”

The Cavaliers had won 29 consecutive midweek games before losing to Old Dominion in Norfolk last Tuesday. Then came an ACC series at Disharoon Park, where UVA lost two of three games to Georgia Tech.

In the final game of that series, the Hoos gave up 25 hits, a performance that “was not representative of the standard of our baseball program,” head coach Brian O’Connor said Tuesday night.

“It’s not about whether you win or not. It’s about how you play the game and what your approach is. And I certainly challenged our guys, and they responded tonight with a really tremendously well-played game offensively.”

Whalen was one of four Cavaliers with at least two hits against Liberty (17-23), along with Ethan Anderson (3-for-3), Jacob Ference (2-for-3) and Harrison Didawick (2-for-3). Four UVA players homered Tuesday night: Whalen, Didawick, Henry Ford and Casey Saucke.

Ford’s solo blast in the fourth gave him 15 homers for the season and moved the freshman into a tie with Didawick, a sophomore, for the team lead. They weren’t deadlocked for long. In the sixth, Didawick smashed a two-run homer over the bullpen in right field.

In 2023, Jake Gelof hit 23 home runs, a single-season record at UVA, and now Ford and Didawick are chasing him.

“They’re running it up there pretty good,” O’Connor said. “Who knows? Maybe those one of those couple of guys can make a run at Jake Gelof. It’s just impressive, the consistency of their approach, and it certainly makes us have a dangerous lineup.”

Virginia used five pitchers Tuesday night, and they limited the Flames to seven hits.

Coming off a series in which Georgia Tech scored 37 runs, O’Connor said, he challenged his pitching staff “to just be a little bit better. Sometimes you think you have to get so much better, but sometimes it’s just about [being] one percent better.”

From a team that advanced to the College World Series last season, the Cavaliers lost most of their experienced pitchers. O’Connor said he knew coming into this season that “the success of this team was going to be determined by the development of the pitching staff, that there were going to be some tough nights and that it’s about them growing and learning and being the best at the end of the year, when we need them. And so that’s what we’re working on, and hopefully we can continue to see steady improvement as we go down the stretch run.”

Three ACC series remain for UVA, with the last two, against NC State (May 10-12) and Virginia Tech (May 16-18), to be played at Disharoon Park.

The Cavaliers’ immediate focus is on BC. The series shifts to the Eagles’ stadium in Chestnut Hill, Mass., for the final two games (Friday and Saturday), so the Hoos want to make the most of their Fenway experience.

“University of Virginia baseball has never played a game in a Major League stadium,” O’Connor said, “and so this is a first for us. And when Boston College reached out about three months ago and asked us if we would consider moving the series to be able to play at Fenway, we jumped on it right away.

“Listen, the guys that wear our uniform, it’s their dream to play at the highest level. We had a chance to practice this year in Nats Park, which was cool, when we were up in the D.C. area, and now we have a chance to play at the historic Fenway Park and it’s a great opportunity for our guys.”

Whalen said at least one of his teammates, Henry Godbout, is a Boston Red Sox fan. Whalen, who roots for the Philadelphia Phillies, has toured Fenway, he said, “but I’ve never watched or played in a game there.”

That will change Thursday night in a 7 o’clock game to air on ACC Network. The surroundings will be tough to ignore, but for a UVA team looking to host an NCAA tournament regional for the second straight year, there’s a lot at stake on this trip, and O’Connor doesn’t want his players to lose sight of that fact.

“The game on Thursday night is a crucial ACC game for us,” he said, “so I believe our guys will be able to understand that it’s not about the nostalgia of playing in Fenway Park. That’s an added bonus. It’s about playing winning baseball and winning the baseball game, and that’s what our focus will be on.”

Whalen echoed his coach’s comments.

“Fenway is a pretty cool place to be able to say you played in,” Whalen said, “but it’s just another game and we have to treat it like that. Just stay in the moment. Obviously, soak it in, but when the first pitch is thrown, just get right back to playing our baseball.”

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