Saved by the Bell: Suddenly, Destiny Embraces Crimson

With one swing, Josh San Salvador crushed a Dan Spring pitch out of the park and perhaps banished with it the always-one-hit-short image of the 2002 Harvard baseball team.

Gone into the light drizzle of the late afternoon were gritty pitching performances that went unrewarded, the endless parade of runners left stranded and bombs over the fences at O’Donnell that always seemed to fly off the other guys’ bats. Here instead was Sanzo, the senior, who returned to the field two days ago after a partially torn ACL had sidelined him for weeks. It apparently took him an extra day to really get comfortable. Good thing it took an extra day to finish the Brown series.

Welcome back, Josh San Salvador. His last name means “St. Savior” in Spanish. That seems fitting enough. His blasts altered Harvard’s season—the Crimson now controls its own destiny heading into the final weekend of Ivy play—but they also seem to have altered the contours of baseball possibility itself. Because it doesn’t seem conceivable that Harvard could blow its chance at the playoffs now—not after this.

Similarly, it didn’t seem possible that the Harvard comeback yesterday could fall short. The Crimson seemed dead in the water at one point. Down eight runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, the same rains that had postponed the final game of the four-game set with Brown fell once again.

Someone in the stands asked a Brown player by the dugout how many innings were needed in order for it to be an official game. The answer came back with a knowing smile, “Five.” With a few more minutes of steady rain, the game could be called and Brown would take the division lead with only four games against bottom-dwelling Yale separating it from the playoffs.

But the forces of the divine intervened. The falling raindrops were replaced by Harvard home runs as St. Savior and company went to work. As the hits kept on coming, the idea of a Harvard loss became that much crueler and—given the slightest inkling of justice in the world—more unlikely.

“When Javy [Lopez] hit that home run, I looked in our dugout, and I looked in theirs, and it looked like we were the team that was up,” said Harvard Coach Joe Walsh.

There may have been a divine intervention beyond San Salvador’s surname. Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the death of Walsh’s mother, Helen.

“I just felt that it was a little bit of extra help today, you know?” Walsh said. “To me it’s even more special. I got up today and said, ‘Hey, Mom, I need you.’”

If the convergence of karmic elements gave Harvard a chance at the comeback, the very human and undoubtedly very tired Ben Crockett nailed it down.

After using five different pitchers in the game, Walsh brought his ace in to get two big outs in the top of the ninth.

This was the same Crockett whom Walsh had left to throw 140 pitches each of the last two weeks, the same Crockett who had struck out 17 batters while losing to the Bears on Saturday. It’s uncertain whether Crockett also single-handedly pulled the tarp over the field after the game, brought the team’s equipment back to Dillon Field House and delivered the game results to the Ivy League by hand, but it doesn’t seem impossible.

Any Randy Johnson comparison would be trite. Suffice to say, Crockett got the job done. And yes, he struck out both batters.

Walsh was an alchemist in the dugout. In addition to bringing in Crockett, he had fellow starter Justin Nyweide make a rare relief appearance once things got tough for starter Barry Wahlberg. At one point, he pinch-hit freshman Rob Wheeler—who had two career at-bats before yesterday—for senior Chaney Sheffield, despite the availability of the more seasoned Bryan Hale and Mickey Kropf in the dugout.

Neither of those two moves paid dividends for the Crimson—save, of course, for being a part of the incredible overall chain of events that produced a 12-12 tie going into the bottom of the ninth. And Harvard did get to that point, didn’t it?

And so, Dan Spring came on to face San Salvador. Spring had shut down a Crimson bases-loaded rally late in Monday’s game, grinning wildly as he returned to the visiting dugout and greeting each high-five with a cool, “All good, all good, all good.” And up came San Salvador on his second day back, looking to complete the comeback and put Harvard in the driver’s seat going into a weekend with Dartmouth…

Dartmouth ended the Crimson’s season last year. It was a heartbreaking weekend, one bereft of the timely plays that make champions. It was a weekend one might expect to see duplicated again this year by an apparently punchless bunch, except…

San Salvador raced around the bases as Spring retreated back to the dugout and, eventually, to Providence. Like many obscure saints, Sanzo had pulled off a miracle in front of a very small crowd. But the few who witnessed it would never forget it.

Here was a sudden boost from the infirmary, a sudden reason to think that a trip to the Ivy League playoffs could really happen, a sudden departure from the Crimson’s recent unclutch past.

San Salvador!