MISS: Game 4 Loss to Dartmouth Ends Baseball's Title Hopes

HANOVER, N.H.—It was a year to confound expectations; up at times and down at others, the Harvard baseball team always found a way to surprise.

Fittingly, the Crimson went into this weekend’s Ivy League season-ending series against Dartmouth (25-14, 15-5 Ivy) shouldering a monster task—take at least three of four from the Big Green, the Red Rolfe leader and one of Division I’s best-hitting teams, or go home for the season—and their bats caught fire, only to go silent in the end.

Dartmouth freshman starter Stephen Perry held the Crimson to two runs on five hits on Sunday, pitching all nine innings and winning the 7-2 Red Rolfe division clincher in the Ivy League season’s final game. That was the inappropriate ending to a weekend of offensive heroics in Harvard’s final push for a third-straight division title.

First, Harvard (20-17-1, 12-7 Ivy) split Saturday’s series at home, winning the first game 20-9 but dropping the second, 13-10, after a devastating ninth-inning collapse.

Needing to sweep the Big Green out of Hanover yesterday, the Crimson got sweet redemption in a dominating shutout and 5-0 win from star pitcher Trey Hendricks—the victim of the previous day’s ninth-inning outburst—in the first game, only to be shut down by Perry and lose the second.

The weekend left a bitter taste for players and coaches, who had similarly come down to the wire and won against Dartmouth in the season’s final series in 2002 and 2003. But with a host of positives—including sophomore Zak Farkes’ assault on the Harvard record books—to be found in an otherwise painful weekend, it was not the way Harvard played that ultimately shattered the Crimson’s title dreams.

Harvard head coach Joe Walsh said it

best. “We played hard today,” Walsh said after Saturday’s disappointing finish. “I don’t think there’s anything that you’ve got to look back and say, ‘We wish we did this,’ or ‘We wish we did that.’ You take everything out of the bag and leave it on the field.”

Instead, Walsh gave credit to Dartmouth, which is celebrating its first Red Rolfe division title since 2001. “It’s just a good ballclub out there,” he said.

The Crimson plays two non-conference make-ups at home versus Holy Cross and Northeastern tomorrow and on Wednesday afternoon—the last college games for seniors Hendricks, centerfielder Bryan Hale and pitchers Jason Brown and Mike Morgalis.

DARTMOUTH 7, HARVARD 2

After tattooing a dizzying collection of Dartmouth pitchers all weekend long, Harvard’s bats were finally figured out yesterday in the Ivy season’s final game—by freshman Stephen Perry.

Perry (6-1) pitched a complete game, marred only by a ninth-inning two-run blast by Harvard catcher Schuyler Mann—the junior’s 10th, which extended his homer streak to four straight games—and the Big Green clinched the Red Rolfe title with a 7-2 win.

The Crimson hit Perry hard all day. But balls that cleared the fence in Cambridge on Saturday were falling short on Sunday—in all, Perry recorded outs on fly balls 17 times.

“For the most part I feel like we made pretty good contact,” Hale said. “The box score would say different, obviously.”

Perry threw mostly fastballs, and with a chilly, damp wind whipping in, hard flies were dying short.

“We obviously could’ve used a few more line-drives, base hits, and scratched a few runs together,” Hale said. “It didn’t happen for us.”

“Other than that,” he said, “we played our asses off.”

Harvard managed only five hits, and Perry walked only one. And for the first time in two days, sophomore star Farkes—Harvard’s career home run leader, with 22—failed to go deep in a game.

Sophomore Frank Herrmann (4-3) started the game and gave up two runs and two hits in 4 2/3 innings, getting the loss. Dartmouth shortstop Ed Lucas, held in check by Harvard pitchers all weekend, was 1-for-4 with 3 RBI.

“I guess, sort of, the well was dry,” Hale said. “Our big bats were getting hits all weekend for us. And they just didn’t fall today.”

HARVARD 5, DARTMOUTH 0

Hendricks, one day removed from a nightmare 60-pitch, six-run outing in two innings on Saturday, came back and beat the Big Green on Sunday in a gutsy, memorable Game 3 performance.

Hendricks (9-2) threw a complete game shutout—his first of the season—and willed the Crimson over Dartmouth, 5-0, mixing a knee-buckling curve with pinpoint accuracy.

The Ivy League Player of the Year candidate, a senior from Houston, scattered six hits—two of which were on bunts, and not one was for extra bases—throwing an overwhelming majority of pitches for strikes.

Hendricks’ efficiency paid off, as he walked none.

Only one batter reached past second base.

“He wanted the ball for the second game today,” Walsh said of the preternaturally competitive Hendricks, a team captain. “I had to walk away from him because he just kept talking and he probably would have talked me into it.”

Hendricks had help, of course, from the same old cast of characters who had been terrorizing Dartmouth pitching all weekend.

Mann hit a solo blast to left on the first pitch he saw from Big Green ace Tim Grant, his third in as many games.

The catcher from Corvallis, Mont., whose two-run shot in Game 4 brought his season total to 10 home runs, has now tied the former single-season Harvard home run record, passed on Saturday by Farkes.

Farkes one-upped Mann with a three-run jack, a missile that continued to rise as it hit the trees beyond Red Rolfe Field’s left field fence roughly 330 feet away, in the fifth—and which broke the Harvard career home run record of 21.

Grant (4-3) took the loss for the Big Green.

DARTMOUTH 13, HARVARD 10

Riding a wave of offense—included during the day were 27 hits and 30 Harvard runs—not seen in Cambridge in weeks, the Crimson was done in, ultimately, by a devastating Dartmouth top of the ninth in Game 2 of the doubleheader.

Up 10-7 going into the inning with Hendricks on the mound, prospects for a Harvard Saturday sweep looked bright. But that was before three-run homers by two of Dartmouth’s best hitters, Brian Zurhellen and Scott Shirrell, powered a six-run Big Green ninth to win the game 13-10.

The home run by Zurhellen after the first two runners reached base was the set-up, tying the game at 10 and reenergizing the Dartmouth dugout.

But the follow-up by Scott Shirrell—a Crimson-killer ever since he hit three home runs and drove in 14 in a game against Harvard in 2002—was the backbreaker.

“I’ll be glad when he graduates,” Walsh said of Shirrell. “The kid’s a hell of a player.”

With two outs and a 3-2 count on Shirrell, the Dartmouth senior blasted a Hendricks fastball over the fence in deep left field, throwing the visiting Big Green faithful into a frenzy.

Up three runs in the bottom of the inning, Dartmouth closer Nicholas Peay retired Harvard’s middle of the order to seal the win.

“It wasn’t like we went out and lost the ballgame,” said Walsh, whose bullpen was stretched thin by high pitch counts and tough ball-strike calls in the late innings. “Give them some credit. The kids hit a couple of two-out homers.”

Even though the Crimson appeared dejected after the loss, few were surprised by Dartmouth’s break-out potential.

Led by Ed Lucas, batting .458 going into Saturday’s games, the Big Green entered the weekend leading the Ivies in runs, hits, doubles, total bases and batting average. Dartmouth was also tied with Harvard for the league lead in home runs.

“Give them some credit,” Walsh said.

Senior Mike Morgalis threw 5 2/3 innings for the Crimson, allowing 7 hits and 7 runs, 6 earned, while walking 5 and striking out a season-high 10.

Hendricks, Farkes and Mann all hit homers for Harvard, with Mann’s three-run shot in the seventh giving the Crimson a 10-7 lead and appearing to strike a crippling blow.

Farkes’ shot was his 13th of the season and third of the day, tying him with Don Allard ’83 for the all-time school career record of 21.

HARVARD 20, DARTMOUTH 9

In the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader, Harvard gave Dartmouth, the Ivy League’s best hitting team, an offensive clinic.

Every Crimson starter got at least one hit and scored at least one run and the 1-4 spots in the Harvard batting order—sophomore right fielder Lance Salsgiver, Farkes, Hendricks and Mann—went ballistic, going 8-for-16 with five home runs and 16 RBIs.

The team roughed up Dartmouth starter Patrick Dowling for 12 runs and 12 hits in 2 1/3 innings.

“I thought we did a good job on battling [Dowling], who tries to keep it down low,” Walsh said. “We forced him to kind of bring it up a little bit, which was our game plan.”

With patience early in the count, Walsh said, the Crimson hitters neutralized the Dartmouth hurler’s low-ball effectiveness.

“He likes to work the knees a little bit,” he said. “We were able to lay off those balls and get a lot of 2-0, 3-1 healthy cuts.”

Farkes’ day was especially memorable. The sophomore from Boston broke Pete Varney’s 34-year-old single-season school home run record of 10—tied by three players since 1970—with an electrifying third-inning grand slam that gave Harvard a 12-2 lead.

Farkes added a two-run shot in the sixth, tattooing a towering drive to right-center.

Farkes finished the day 3-for-5 with two home runs, seven RBIs and four runs scored.

“What can I say,” Walsh said, astonished. “Every time the kid comes up to bat, I’m down at the third base box just saying, ‘Hey, what’s going to happen next?’”

Salsgiver, Mann and Hendricks added home runs for the Crimson, which extended its Ivy win streak to four. Herrmann (4-2) entered the game in the fifth inning and earned the win.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.