THE PROMISED LANDE: Final Games Just Won’t Be the Same

HANOVER, N.H.—Since I’ve been here, Harvard has never played for a national ranking, a regional seed or an at-large NCAA tournament bid. Sometimes the team didn’t even play for scouts, and they never played for large crowds.

But none of that has ever really bothered me.

This week, though, the baseball team will be playing for something I’ve never seen it play for—nothing—and it just seems so wrong.

There are two more games, you know.

That’s the saddest part of all.

And now a team that years from now I will remember for its thrilling comebacks over Brown will end its year with no drama at all.

And now seniors that I’ll remember for the things they did in the thick of Ivy races—the diving catches and the 140-pitch efforts and the walk-off game-winning doubles—will end their careers playing in games they hardly care about.

The last two games of the season won’t be Harvard baseball, and it’s a shame, because the Crimson players made sure the last weekend of the season was. Even if it wasn’t enough to win Harvard’s third-consecutive division title, this weekend was Harvard baseball.

Everything on the line. No laws, no limits, no one holding back.

If you have to pick somewhere to start, it’s got to be with Trey Hendricks. The senior. The co-captain. The ace. The slugger.

The guy that Harvard coach Joe Walsh, with an emotional twinge in his voice, said after yesterday’s devastating loss, “A few years from now, you’ll read about him being inducted into the Harvard Hall of Fame.”

In Saturday’s split, Hendricks went 7-for-9 with a pair of homers, and entered the second game with a 10-7 lead after seven. He coasted through the eighth, but in the ninth, a few low strikes weren’t called and a few high ones knocked over the fence in a crushing Dartmouth comeback. He ended up allowing six runs and throwing 60 pitches.

He should never have taken the mound yesterday, less than 20 hours later, but he did, and he was fantastic. In a seven-inning complete game shutout, he allowed only six hits, two on bunts, one on a chintzy Texas-leaguer off a bat handle. He kept his pitch count—and his fastball—down, and he outdueled the Big Green’s ace Tim Grant for the 5-0 Harvard win.

It was the sweetest form of redemption, but Hendricks wasn’t done.

“Hendricks,” Walsh said, shaking his head with a look of admiration. “He wanted the ball for the second game today. I had to walk away from him because he just kept talking, and he probably would have talked me into it.”

On days like this, when seasons end suddenly, Walsh has a reputation among Crimson sportswriters for speaking eloquently about his departing seniors, and yesterday was no different.

He talked about Hendricks a lot. About how it “killed him” to not get to play against Yale, when he was sidelined with back spasms on the only day of the Ivy season Harvard was swept. About how he embraced his move to third base when injuries left little choice. About how “he’s going to get a shot in pro ball, and he deserves it.”

He talked about his other captain, too. About Bryan Hale and his defense in centerfield and the way that not once—not once—in four seasons had he ever seen Hale not run his hardest to first base. Not on pop-ups. Not on flyouts. Not ever. And how that was what he was going to remember about Bryan Hale years from now.

He talked about his senior pitchers, Jason Brown and Mike Morgalis, and how they deserved better fates in their final Ivy weekend. He talked about how Brown had never thrown as hard as he did that day, and about how Morgalis had been shafted by the umpires the day before.

He talked about his four bulldogs.

“We’re always trying to get some tough, hard-nosed kids to play here,” Walsh said, “and you can put those kids at the top. You could sit here and talk about the home runs and the strikeouts, but that’s not why they’re going to be missed.”

And that’s exactly why it’s so sad that they will end their season not again Princeton—or Miami or Rice—but against Northeastern. Not in the Ivy Championship Series or an NCAA Regional, but in the make-up date of a rainout. Not in Mark Light Stadium or Reckling Park, but on O’Donnell Field.

Harvard baseball isn’t about a lot of things. It isn’t about large crowds or state-of-the-art facilities or sparkling new stadiums. But it has always been about the intense and peculiar pressure of an Ivy title run.

Walsh said his seniors are what Harvard baseball is all about.

And that’s why it’s a shame that their last two games won’t be Harvard baseball.

—Staff writer Lande A. Spottswood can be reached at spottsw@fas.harvard.edu.