PREVIEW: For Crimson, Spring Break Will Mean Work and Play

For many students, spring break is the ideal time to unwind and relax. But for the Harvard baseball team, it is the busiest week of the year.

With 12 games in the next 10 days, the Crimson (1-5) faces a daunting stretch of competition that will test its depth and stamina.

Over the course of the road trip, which includes the squad’s second and final visit to the Sunshine State and the opening weekend of its Ivy League docket, Harvard will log nearly 4,000 travel miles by plane and bus.

The vacation essentially represents the final stretch of the team’s preseason and the last opportunity to iron out the kinks in the roster before the Ancient Eight campaign begins in earnest in April.

“Starting the season with five losses is tough, but the college season is a long process,” captain Morgan Brown said. “The team is still coming together, gelling together. With 12 games in [10] days, we’ll need everybody.”

The bats of the typically explosive Crimson lineup—and most conspicuously that of sophomore slugger Steffan Wilson—were unusually quiet through the trip to play NYIT last weekend. Sophomore Tom Stack-Babich picked up some of the slack, however, tallying two hits in each of his last three games.

The offensive slump, according to Brown, is merely a symptom of rust, and should dissipate with the fading winter.

“Everybody might be pressing a little bit,” Brown said. “No one’s going to stay in a slump very long in this lineup.”

On the hill, Harvard was buttressed by a pair of stellar outings from its tallest hurlers.

Sophomore Brad Unger pitched five innings for the win and senior Matt Brunnig twirled four frames of scoreless relief in the final meeting in New York. With their efforts, Unger and Brunnig quickly entered the running for the available spots in the starting rotation.

“After [Shawn] Haviland and [Adam] Cole, it’s still up in the air,” Brown said. “Unger and Brunnig will get starts. There’s a lot of options.”

One added element to the trip is that spring break is the lone juncture when Ivy League regulations permit the team to bring its full complement of 29 players on the road, with travel rosters limited to 23 on all other dates.

The high quantity of games in such a short span feeds an all-hands-on-deck mentality and affords the unit’s youngest and most versatile players a time to shine.

A talent like sophomore Taylor Meehan, who can play every infield position and pitch and who stroked the game-winning double in the victory over NYIT, is all the more valuable during this busy tract of schedule.

“[We have] lots of versatility from guys in the lineup and guys on the bench,” Brown said. “That’s definitely going to be exploited. We’ve been limited by travel regulations. We’ll see freshmen play that we haven’t seen yet.”

The Crimson begins the journey tonight at the University of Jacksonville for the opener of a three-game set against the Dolphins. Jacksonville possesses the dual advantage of home field and more game experience but recently dropped two of three games to fellow Atlantic Sun team Campbell, a school Harvard has matched up well with in years past.

Then, the Crimson heads to Boca Raton for a two-day flurry of single games against Barry, Lynn, and Florida Atlantic.

One more southerly leg puts the team in Miami for clashes with Florida International and St. Thomas.

Last spring, Harvard squared off against the latter four of these teams and left with a 2-2 record, all of them high-scoring affairs.

“They’re good schools to get as a tune-up,” Jason Brown said. “I know Jacksonville’s a pretty good team. And we played St. Thomas and Lynn last year and they’re not great teams but they’re good competition. All of them have been playing since late-January, early-February, so…[they will] be good games.”

Finally, the Crimson returns to the Northeast to get reacquainted with its familiar foes.

In Princeton and Cornell, though, Harvard encounters perhaps the two most dangerous challengers to unseat it as Ivy League champion. The Big Red captured the Gehrig Division crown a year ago, wresting it from the habitual grasp of the Tigers.

“Conference play always has a different feel,” Morgan Brown said. “It’s strange—you always play a little bit harder.”

“I’ve been feeling really good about our chances in the Ivy League this year,” Jason Brown added.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.