Heartbreaker at Home for Harvard

Offensive explosions in baseball often have the same effect as using bubblegum to plug up a leaky faucet.

They can serve as a temporary fix, momentarily masking deficiencies and creating the illusion of a fundamentally sound operation.

But as the Harvard baseball team found out yesterday, sharp line drives into the gaps and base-clearing home runs can only conceal shoddy defense and ineffective pitching for so long.

The Crimson lineup scorched the ball in yesterday’s back-and-forth battle with Holy Cross at O’Donnell Field, but lackluster play on the mound and in the field ultimately doomed Harvard (4-17, 2-2 Ivy) to a disappointing 12-11 defeat.

“When you get 13 hits and 11 runs and a team gives you five errors you take advantage of it,” Crimson coach Joe Walsh said. “I’m tired of being in slugfests and coming out on the short end of them.”

In an ugly contest that featured five lead changes and runs scored in every inning, it quickly became evident that the game would be decided by whichever team managed to play the least flawed brand of baseball.

It turned out to be the Crusaders.

With the scored tied at 11 in the top of the ninth inning, a pair of singles and a walk loaded the bases with two outs for Holy Cross third baseman Matt Perry with Harvard senior Taylor Meehan on the mound.

Perry laced a single into center field, bringing home Jake Gorman. The Crusaders’ Rob Dornfriend tried to score from second on the play, but was gunned down at home by Crimson senior right fielder Tom Stack-Babich to send the game into last licks.

Down to its final three outs and facing a one-run deficit, Harvard seemed poised for another rally in the bottom of the ninth when Stack-Babich led off with a hard-hit single to right center and advanced to second on an error by the Holy Cross centerfielder.

But the Crimson quickly racked up two outs on a pop-up and a strikeout, and after Stack-Babich reached third on a wild pitch and sophomore Dillon O’Neill walked, Meehan flew out harmlessly to right to end the game.

“It was not a pretty game on either side,” Harvard captain Harry Douglas said. “The games like that you gotta do what you gotta do—you gotta win.”

Douglas recalled the Crimson’s previous contest—a 15-11 victory over Penn—in which Harvard forced a tie with a three-run ninth before winning in eleven innings.

“Our last game…was a similar game but we were able to get those runs in the last inning,” Douglas said “We didn’t get them today.”

The Crimson started yesterday’s loss with a bang, courtesy of an increasingly familiar source of offensive firepower.

After tying the game at one in the bottom of the second, Harvard filled the bases for senior left fielder Matt Rogers. On the first pitch he saw, Rogers blasted a grand slam straight down the left-field line to give him six home runs and 23 RBI on the season, totals which are tied for first and second in the Ivy League, respectively.

“We had the bases loaded and when we saw Matty coming to the plate, we were feeling pretty good about that with the way he’s been playing,” Douglas said.

But the Crimson pitching staff couldn’t hold up its end of the bargain. Freshman Conner Hulse pitched a relatively clean third frame, giving up just a run on two hits and striking out a pair of batters, but senior Adam Cole and sophomore Anthony Nutter combined to allow four runs in the fourth to give the Crusaders the lead back.

Down 7-5 in the fifth, Harvard roared back on the strength of a two-run homer by Stack-Babich and later took a 10-8 lead in the bottom of the seventh.

But Meehan, who took the mound in relief in the eighth, struggled as Holy Cross scored three runs in the frame to go up, 11-10. Meehan gave up three hits and walked two batters in the inning and hurt his own cause with a throwing error.

The Crimson returned to the plate to force yet another tie, but the Crusaders’ final run in the top of the ninth proved to be the fatal blow for Harvard.

Following the game, Walsh acknowledged that while the Crimson’s offense has thrived on big blasts from its powerful sluggers, the team is in need of a return to fundamentals if it hopes to achieve any lasting success.

“We gotta make some adjustments,” he said. “Making contact at the right time is more important—being able to play both the short game and the long ball. We can’t count on home run balls leaving the yard every ballgame to win it.”

—Staff writer Loren Amor can be reached at lamor@fas.harvard.edu.