Baseball Falls to Huskies

It was an afterthought of a game tacked on to the hollow end of a tantalizingly close-to-glory season.

So it wasn’t surprising that the Harvard baseball team fell 12-6 to Northeastern in its final game of the season yesterday. The season’s third meeting between the two teams had been rescheduled from a rainout.

Though the Crimson (21-18-1, 13-7 Ivy) kept it close through six innings, the Huskies (20-15, 8-4 America East) took advantage of six home runs to mow through the Harvard bullpen and break the game wide open.

Sophomore designated hitter Frank Herrmann chipped in with two blasts of his own, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep the Crimson in the game.

Since the Ivy season ended with Sunday’s 7-2 loss to Dartmouth, today’s game held little ceremony other than a few words by Harvard coach Joe Walsh at the end and a few tears in the eyes of the graduating players.

“It just wasn’t all there,” said co-captain centerfielder Bryan Hale. “Today and even yesterday, when we won [8-7 over Holy Cross], just not all there.”

The Huskies wasted no time jumping on sophomore starter Morgan Brown in the first inning. Northeastern left fielder Mike Steinberg—who had a monster day, finishing 5-for-6 with three runs, four RBI and two long balls—took Brown deep on the very first pitch of the game.

A walk, two singles and an error by sophomore shortstop Zak Farkes accounted for the other two Husky runs and Harvard was in a 3-0 hole before it even came up to bat.

“We were a little short on pitching,” Walsh said, adding that the injury-plagued Brown had long desired to see action on the mound. “He pitched, and I could just tell right from the beginning that he couldn’t get his knee up. After about two guys, I knew that he wasn’t healthy, that he had fooled me. But that’s typical of a lot of these guys. They want to play, hurt or not.”

The Crimson showed signs of life in the bottom of the first, however, when Farkes smacked a one-out single to right field, swiped second and reached third on a wild pitch. After co-captain third baseman Trey Hendricks walked, a sacrifice fly by junior catcher Schuyler Mann sent Farkes home with Harvard’s first run.

The Crimson tacked on two more when Hendricks stole home on a double steal with sophomore first baseman Josh Klimkiewicz taking second. A single by Herrmann—who went 3-for-4 with four RBI—scored Klimkiewicz to tie it up at 3-3.

Freshman Jake Bruton came in in the second inning in relief, and ended up taking the loss after giving up two runs over four innings. Both runs came on Steinberg’s second dinger of the game.

“I think Bruton pitched pretty well, gave up that one home run, but I looked at Northeastern’s averages and I said to the coach after the game, ‘We’ve seen you three times, and you’re as good a ballclub as we’ve seen,’” Walsh said.

“You get six runs off a ballclub, and you get good pitching, you win,” Walsh added. “That didn’t happen today, plain and simple. We threw too many balls over the plate. The fastball just wasn’t fast enough, our curveball wasn’t curving enough.”

Herrmann’s homer in the sixth inning got Harvard within one, but Northeastern touched up senior Mike Morgalis for four runs and six hits in the seventh inning to put the game out of reach. The Huskies also tagged junior Curtis Miller for three runs in the top of the ninth, ballooning their lead to 12-4. Northeastern had back-to-back homers in both the seventh and ninth innings.

“It was rough for a lot of reasons,” Hale said, “especially to come down after the meaningful games at Dartmouth.”

The game was the last in a Harvard uniform for seniors Hale, Hendricks, Morgalis and pitcher Jason Brown. The season finale also saw an end to Mann’s streak of five straight games with a home run, dating back to last Saturday against the Big Green. Mann had a final chance to extend the streak in the eighth inning, but grounded out and finished 0-for-2 with an RBI.

Hale said that it was difficult to sum up the season, since the primary goal of the Ivy playoffs eluded the Crimson.

“What have we accomplished? We’ll have to wait until next year to answer that,” he said.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.