AOTW: Three's a Crowd, Unless You Win

Before the week started—before a pile of players on the infield grass, a Gatorade-soaked Joe Walsh and 25 championship rings on order—the Harvard baseball team needed three victories.

Three heroes delivered them.

Beginning with a one-game Red Rolfe division playoff Wednesday and ending in the second game of a sweep of Princeton in the Ivy Championship Series Saturday, senior pitchers Ben Crockett, Justin Nyweide and Chaney Sheffield combined to allow two earned runs in 23 innings.

Their combined ERA? 0.78. Their combined record? 3-0.

The most impressive quality of the performances, though, cannot be depicted with numbers. Each hurler overcame a different obstacle to lead the Crimson to victory.

Crockett (6-3), who has long been the staff’s ace and workhorse, pitched a nine-inning, 137-pitch gem on his way to sixteen strikeouts. It would amount to a fairly average outing for Crockett, the Ivy co-Pitcher of the Year, except that he had thrown 125 pitches in a season-saving victory over Dartmouth just four days earlier.

“The team counts on him in games we need to win,” said Walsh after the 2-1 victory thrust Harvard into the Ivy League Championships, “and he came through for us with a tremendous effort.”

While Crockett’s performance was characteristically impressive because it concluded a four-day span that saw him pitch 18 innings, Nyweide had thrown just 6.2 innings with a 9.45 ERA in his last two starts.

But with Harvard’s rotation depleted due to sophmore Marc Hordon’s sprained shoulder, Nyweide (5-3) willed his way to a career-best 14 strikeouts and a complete-game five hitter to lead the Crimson to a 5-1 victory.

When his team needed him most, Nyweide delivered.

“Nyweide came up big because he gave us nine innings,” Walsh said. “With a depleted staff—with Hordon and Crockett not going—it was just what the doctor ordered.”

The stage was then set for Sheffield, a three-year reliever who finally emerged as a weekend starter in the middle of the Ivy League season. Sheffield threw five efficient innings, allowing only one unearned run on three hits, before yielding the mound with the Crimson ahead 2-1 in the sixth.

Three innings of brilliant relief later, Sheffield was the winning pitcher of the Ivy Championships Series’ deciding game. Standing in front of the dugout after the game, grinning through a mouthful of chocolate-chip cookie, Sheffield tried to express his joy and disbelief.

“It was awesome,” Sheffield said. “It couldn’t have worked out better.”

Maybe, though, it can get better.

NCAA Regionals begin on May 31, and as league champion the Crimson automatically qualifies.

Only time will tell, but thanks to its three senior aces, the Crimson will have its chance to make a post-season run.