Baseball Prepares for Evening Showdown with Defending Champions

FULLERTON, Calif.—Sunny Orange County, Cal. welcomed the Harvard baseball team on Wednesday afternoon. Tonight at 11 p.m. EST, defending national champion Cal State Fullerton will extend its own salutation.

“This is where the fun begins,” Harvard coach Joe Walsh said.

Starting on the mound for the Crimson (29-15, 15-15 Ivy) will be veteran senior Mike Morgalis, whose 3.53 ERA was the staff’s third best, and who has not pitched since May 1. Walsh had lined up the former Notre Dame transfer for the Ivy Championship Series rubber match, which, after the Crimson’s 2-0 sweep of Cornell May 9, never took place.

Walsh deemed Morgalis his Game 1 starter as early as the conclusion of the ICS.

Of greater intrigue during the week was whether Fullerton (41-15, 16-5 Big West) would start lefty Ricky Romero (12-4, 2.80)—who likely will be taken with a top pick in this week’s MLB draft—to face the Crimson, or if it would instead start No. 2 pitcher Scott Sarver (9-3, 3.97).

The answer was confirmed today—neither. Titans rookie Wes Roemer (5-3, 3.68), who took home Big West Freshman Pitcher of the Year honors as the team’s third starter, will take on Harvard’s strong lineup. Though Roemer pitched well overall this season, he figured largely in Fullerton’s recent cold spell (two straight losses and just a 6-4 record in the team’s last 10 games).

In his last appearance, Roemer gave up four runs in three innings of relief against UC Riverside.

“Some people might think of it as an insult,” said Harvard junior Frank Herrmann, who lounged in the stands at Fullerton’s Goodwin Field during Friday’s earlier Missouri-Arizona game. “But you have to use it to your advantage. If we can get to [Roemer] early, he might start thinking about it.”

“Hey,” Herrmann added, “if they don’t want to throw their [MLB] top-10 pick tonight, it’s fine with us.”

Early word was that tonight’s game, which will be broadcast live on ESPNU at 11 p.m. EDT, has been sold out. Seating capacity at Goodwin Field tops out at approximately 3,500.

PREPARING FOR A SHOWDOWN

Herrmann said the team’s mood during the week—it arrived in Orange County midday on Wednesday—was “really positive,” and equally low-key.

Yesterday, the team had a chance to practice during the daytime, and then the Crimson attended an evening banquet with all squads—Fullerton, Missouri, and Arizona round out the first-round regional—present. At night, the squad stayed in the hotel with an early curfew. Many played poker.

This morning, Walsh held a team meeting.

“That was mostly to get our minds in the right place,” Herrmann said. “And just to see what we’re doing.”

Herrmann and a few others, including teammates Jake Bruton, Max Warren, Javi Castellanos, and Matt Brunnig, attended the 4 p.m. Missouri-Arizona contest to catch an early look at star Missouri pitcher Max Scherzer, who yielded four early runs to the Wildcat bats.

For the most part, the team maintained a “loose” focus.

“We’re not going out there just to visit,” Walsh said earlier in the week. “I want to go out there, play our game, leave it on the table, come win or come lose, and that’s okay. I just want to make sure that we played our best baseball.”

“We feel capable of doing that,” he said. “I’m absolutely feeling really good about that.”

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu. For the remainder of the weekend, he will continue to issue live reports from the Fullerton Regional.