PHOTO: PAULA MULLER
John Frates addresses members of the Bishop Fenwick and Austin Prep baseball teams before a game at Fraser Field on Friday.
By STEVE KRAUSE
LYNN — There is something particularly cruel about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, says John Frates.
“It’s almost like having alzheimer’s in reverse,” he said Friday during the first of four games at Fraser Field this weekend to raise money for ALS awareness. “Your brain is perfect. You have all your faculties. You can think clearly. But the rest of your body is failing you. It is a horror.”
If anyone should know about this, it’s Frates. His son, Peter, a former baseball player at St. John’s Prep and Boston College, was diagnosed with ALS in 2012 at the age of 28. For someone who was so naturally athletic, and who always did everything with such confidence, the diagnosis was a stunner.
“This body that enabled him to do all of these athletic things has failed him,” his father said. “ALS … you probably couldn’t print what I’d really like to say about it. I live this every day of my life now, but I cannot even imagine what it’s like for Peter. It is a devastating disease.”
If the name Peter Frates sounds familiar, perhaps it should. It was Frates who helped popularize the “Ice Bucket Challenge” two years ago, when people all over America dumped pails of ice-cold water on themselves, donating the money they got via pledges to ALS research.
“Pete had a lot of cachet built up and once he got involved the thing just took off,” Frates said. “If it weren’t for his connection with it, the challenge wouldn’t have gone as far as it did.”
The challenge ended up raising $300 million for ALS research.
Friday, Austin Prep played Bishop Fenwick at Fraser Field in the first of four baseball games this weekend. The tournament is organized by Michael Winn of IMG College, which helps with BC’s sports broadcasts. Initially, the tournament was going to be at Boston College, but logistical issues got in the way, Winn said.
As it happened, all eight of the schools involved in this tournament — Fenwick, Austin Prep, Malden Catholic, Matignon, Lynnfield, Pentucket, Danvers and Essex Tech — are from the North Shore area. That made Fraser Field an ideal place to hold the tournament.
Winn got a hold of Chris Hall, who is the commissioner of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, which includes the North Shore Navigators. Since Navs’ general manager Bill Terlecky belongs to the Larry Lucchino “we’re in the ‘Yes’ business” school of thought, it didn’t take a lot of phone calls between all the parties, including the City of Lynn, for the “Pitching in for Pete” tournament to find its home.
Just like Major League Baseball’s annual “Jackie Robinson Day,” when everyone in uniform has No. 42 on his back, all the players in this tournament will wear No. 3, which was Frates’ number at Boston College.
“But no one will wear it at BC again,” Frates’ father says proudly. “That has meant so much to us.”
Perhaps the thickening clouds forced incoming airplanes to a trajectory that took them over Fraser Field, because they kept flying over the field. But they didn’t fly over when Winn wanted them to.
“I was hoping,” he said, “that we’d get a good one to fly over just when the National Anthem ended. That way, I could say we have a flyover.”
These little bits of levity must mean so much to John Frates as they obviously provide momentary relief from the daily horror not only of taking care of his son, but watching him struggle with the disease.
“At this point,” Frates said, “communication is down to the eyes. And we really have to be able to pick up what he’s trying to say. It gets frustrating at times.”
Much of the money the family raises goes toward home health care for Peter.
“Round-the-clock nursing is a godsend,” Frates said, “but it’s not cheap. It comes out of the generosity of folks like the ones who come here today.”
Through all of the horrors and indignities that a disease such as ALS can bring, Peter Frates refuses to use the word “tragedy” to describe it.
“He’d say, ‘no, don’t use that word to describe this.’” his father said. “To him, a tragedy was a little boy or girl dying before they ever had a chance to live, or a soldier who has given his life for his country.”
Out of respect for Peter Frates, we won’t use the word. But we will echo his dad. ALS is a cruel, vicious and obscenely unfair disease that has robbed way too many people of first their vitality and then their lives. If you find yourself with nothing to between the hours of 10 this morning and about 6 tonight, go to Fraser Field and take in one of these games.
The Frates family will appreciate it.