 Johnny Ayers has perhaps the busiest schedule of any athlete at Boston College, playing both football and baseball.
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Most of us know Johnny Ayers as the guy who roped a double off of the first pitch Dice-K ever threw in America.
The rest of us know him as that kid who plays football and baseball.
And those of us who don't know that have been living under a rock.
While most of Boston College was embarking on spring break excursions last March, the BC baseball team was down in Fort Myers to join the Boston Red Sox in the early stages of spring training. It just so happened that Daisuke Matsuzaka's first preseason start was scheduled for that Friday, and Ayers was the Eagle lucky enough to be batting leadoff.
Well, "lucky" may be the wrong word; facing the nation's most anticipated starting pitcher in his first-ever appearance in a Red Sox uniform would probably have made Albert Pujols squirm.
So imagine the astonishment that swarmed the country when Ayers, a junior infielder from Oakton, Va., from a team whose field is used as a parking lot during football season, rocketed a first-pitch fastball down the left-field line with all of America watching.
"I made it pretty clear I was going to hunt the fastball," said Ayers. "First pitch was a fastball, so I took a hack."
Well then, it was quite a hack; Dice-K's fastball left even A-Rod looking dazed and confused last Friday.
Gene DeFilippo should send Ayers a thank you-note. For a baseball program that gets relatively no attention compared to other ACC powerhouses like Clemson and Florida State, the press coverage that ensued after the Dice-K double was, in a word, unbelievable. ESPN, Fox, USA Today, CNN, The Boston Globe, NESN - they were all there.
Must be pretty flattering to see your name in the same sentence as somebody like Daisuke Matsuzaka.
"I think it was great for our program to get this kind of exposure in Boston and, to a lesser degree, nationwide," Ayers said. "[Ryan Hutchinson, Jared McGuire] and I were the first three to face him, and we all just looked forward to the opportunity to face a pitcher of Dice-K's magnitude. All the reporters calling our cell phones, all the media requests - it was definitely an exciting time in my baseball career," he said.
Spring Break
