Hurlers Key to Baseball's ICS Sweep

After a row of bad weather, rain delays, postponements, and cancellations, the season that refused to finish finally did. It just didn’t happen the way that most expected it to in April.

Or, arguably, May.

Harvard swept Cornell Monday afternoon in two games to win the best-of-three Ivy Championship Series and finally punch its ticket to the NCAA Tournament. But it wasn’t the big bats that had carried the Crimson against Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth that did the job.

No home runs were hit, but junior hurler Frank Herrmann and freshman Shawn Haviland dazzled all in attendance, allowing no earned runs over 16 innings in the two closest games of the 2005 season. Herrmann threw a nine-inning, complete game shutout, while Haviland permitted just two singles over seven innings before being relieved by his classmate, closer Steffan Wilson.

Not bad for a staff once expected to be hard-hitting Harvard’s weakest link.

“You can’t even begin to say how huge that was,” captain Schuyler Mann said. “We knew what we were going up against, and [Haviland and Herrmann] proved they were two of the best in the league.”

After struggling to find his rhythm early in the first game, Herrmann rediscovered a sweeping breaking ball which kept the Big Red off-balance in the later innings, fanning five in the fifth through ninth frames. Haviland, meanwhile, worked quickly, notably throwing a three-pitch seventh after allowing his second single in the sixth.

The Crimson won 2-0 behind Herrmann, and then 4-2 on the strength of Haviland’s start.

But why did we see the frosh instead of Harvard coach Joe Walsh’s typical Game 2 starter, Mike Morgalis?

The undefeated senior, Walsh said, didn’t start the second game as he usually does for two reasons: first, Morgalis works better on nine days of rest; and second, Walsh wanted someone with more experience if the series ultimately came down to an all-or-nothing third contest.

Morgalis, though, looks to get his chance on the hill soon enough.

“He’ll start Game One in the [NCAA] Regionals, I’ll tell you that much,” Walsh said.

MORGAN BROWN, MVP

Ask someone today who Harvard’s 2005 MVP is, and the statistics would lead you everywhere around the diamond—to catcher, to first, to second, to third—and maybe, just maybe, to short.

Joe Walsh, however, has been looking in Morgan Brown’s direction for quite a while.

The junior All-Ivy second-teamer returned to Ivy League play after being hospitalized with a virus which caused him to miss the Red Rolfe-deciding Dartmouth series. Brown and junior Zak Farkes—playing second today instead of sophomore Brendan Byrne—flashed the leather in a sturdy keystone combination, turning four critical double plays, two in each contest.

With Brown’s return, the Crimson was at last genuinely healthy for the first time this year.

“When we were voting for the [All-Ivy] awards, I told everyone, ‘Hey, that shortstop’s my MVP,’” Walsh said. “That’s what I think. You can take that .272 average and throw it out the window...There’s no doubt about it.”

“He looks like his old self, and he was the key,” Walsh added. “He gave us the moves.”

WELCOME TO THE GUN SHOW

While Harvard’s pitching starred in the box score, it was its defense that shone on the field.

Besides the four twin-killings turned by some combination of Brown, Farkes, and junior first baseman Josh Klimkiewicz, the Crimson picked off runners with extreme prejudice. In doing so, Harvard never allowed the nine base-runners allowed by Herrmann in Game 1 to score.

Mann gunned down two would-be thieves at second—once in fourth, and once in the fifth—and then, in the second game, caught Cornell’s Matt Miller attempting to steal home unassisted.

Wilson, Harvard’s third baseman-cum-closer, also unveiled his pitching arm at the hot corner, picking a tricky groundball backhanded before firing it to first for the third out of the inning.

“It’s nice to win a game on pitching and defense,” Walsh summarized.

Still, the play of the day probably belongs to senior left-fielder Ian Wallace, who—besides going 4-for-7—threw a laser to Mann in the sixth inning of Game 1 to gun down Josh Foster at home.

“We had to make plays because they were making plays,” Mann said. “They were making every tough play, and we weren’t getting any breaks. We had to match them defensively.”

The Big Red had finished the regular season with the best defense in the Ivy League.

RIGHT IN HIS WHEELHOUSE

Senior Rob Wheeler spent his last day at O’Donnell Field as more than a starter.

Hitting sixth in the designated hitter slot against Cornell, he earned the title of winner.

“I’m so proud,” Mann said. “All the work he’s put in these four years came together today.”

Wheeler, a big swinger who finally found his offensive groove this season, has come alive in the past two Harvard homestands. He went 5-for-7 with a home run when the Crimson hosted Dartmouth for a doubleheader last weekend, and he came up clutch again today.

The Minnesota native drove in the second run in Game 1 on a one-out single to left field in the fourth, scoring Mann to manufacture a 2-0 cushion. In Game 2, he then thumped an RBI single to center in the seventh, tying the contest up at 1-1.

“That’s a senior just stepping up,” Walsh said. “That’s what you play for.”

THE PROPHESY FULFILLED

In early March, before any games had been played and Harvard was still confined to indoor practices, Walsh reiterated his fundamental baseball philosophy in a prophetic interview.

“If we can do those little things better than other teams and be better prepared, then I really feel that we get a chance to win the tight ballgame,” Walsh told The Crimson. “To me, the bigger the ballgame, the better your bunting game’s gotta be.”

As it happened today, Harvard’s venerable baseball man turned out to be exactly right.

In the eighth inning of Game 2, with the Crimson clinging to a 2-1 lead to sweep, junior Lance Salsgiver followed a Morgan Brown single with a perfect bunt down the third-base line, leaving both runners safe. Then, perhaps most surprisingly, Harvard’s home-run king, Farkes, laid down another picturesque bunt to get himself to first, loading the bases.

Mann later doubled to the left-field wall, scoring two insurance runs to raise the score to 4-1.

“It’s something coach has been preaching the four years since I’ve been here, and yeah, we’ve been terrible at bunting,” Mann said. “This year, it’s turned around a little bit, and we’ve gotten better. Coach always told us it’d make a big inning for us, and today was the perfect example.”

Walsh, it seems, has committed that very lesson to memory himself.

“I always tell our guys,” he said after winning the Ivy Championship Series, clothes drenched from his victory bath, “the bigger the game, the better the bunting game’s gotta be.”

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.