Rivalry Adds Edge to Set of Key Twinbills

As the Harvard baseball team heads down to Providence to play a four-game weekend set against Brown, the squad knows that it controls its own destiny—just barely that is.

The Crimson (10-22, 8-4 Ivy) currently sits three games behind first-place Dartmouth in the Ivy’s Rolfe Division, with the team desperately trying to make up the ground in the two remaining weeks of the season.

What makes this weekend so intense? The Bears (14-15, 8-4) are in the same position.

Harvard and Brown are knotted at second in the standings, and each team knows that it must win the series to have any real chance at catching the Big Green.

“We could play very good baseball against Brown, get a split, and it would probably eliminate us,” Crimson coach Joe Walsh said.

For Harvard, this means going to the Bears’ home field, and taking at least three-of-four from them, preferably a clean sweep.

In addition to the pressure that comes with a must-win series, a fierce rivalry has defined the matchup between the two teams for years. Clearly, there will be no love lost this weekend—last year Crimson ace Shawn Haviland ’08 described his feelings towards the Bears: “They don’t like us, we don’t like them.”

Awaiting the Harvard players will be a hostile Rhode Island crowd.

“It’s always pretty intense when we go down there,” senior Tom Stack-Babich said. “Their coach is fiery and they feed off that. It’s always a pretty heated battle.”

But the tough atmosphere does not scare Walsh or his team.

“I worry about the players on the field and not the fans or the coaching staff,” Walsh said. “We’ve played in front of some wild crowds at Brown but we’ve also played in front of some wild fans around the country.”

Instead, the Crimson comes into the series feeling confident. A beanpot loss to Boston College at Fenway on Monday was sandwiched in between Sunday and Tuesday’s double-headers against Yale, in which Harvard took three of four from the Bulldogs.

As it has been all season, some very timely hitting was the key for Harvard. In the second game of Tuesday’s twinbill, captain Harry Douglas knocked a single through the infield in the bottom of the ninth to take the series victory.

The win marked the Crimson’s fourth walk-off win in its last eight Ivy League games.

“I think that we’ve been a pretty gritty club,” Stack-Babich said. “We’re getting big hits when we need them and doing just enough to win.”

Add a number of come-from-behind victories as well, and Harvard’s season has not been short on drama.

Given the Crimson’s proven mettle in close games, nobody is ruling out a late-season surge to put the squad atop the Rolfe Division and into the Ivy championship.

“We just want to make sure we can play up to our capabilities and I think the wins will take care of themselves,” Walsh said. “This season, it hasn’t been about how good the other team is, it’s come down to how well we play the game—whether we’ve been able to move runners along and take our opportunities.”

Brown, however, might see the situation a little differently.

Whereas Harvard still has to play Dartmouth, and can thus make up games more quickly, the Bears do not have as much control, making this weekend’s key contests doubly important for the home team.

Brown boasts a powerful lineup capable of doing some damage to the young Crimson pitching staff, beginning with senior center fielder Steve Daniels.

Daniels—a former Ivy League Rookie of the Year—is a prototypical leadoff man, having stolen an incredible 73 bases in his career.

Leading the team in both slugging and on-base percentages is cleanup hitter Pete Greskoff. The sophomore first baseman made the Ivy League honor roll this week for his two-home run performance in the series against Dartmouth.

But Harvard too received representation on the honor roll. With his walk-off hit to go along with his .450 average over the course of the week, Douglas ensured his spot on the list as well.

The heart of the Crimson lineup is comprised of seniors, and the veterans will need to continue their strong play if they intend to make a playoff push in their final season.

Second-baseman Taylor Meehan and outfielder Matt Rogers join Stack-Babich and Douglas as Harvard’s main offensive threats.

“The seniors have really stepped up,” Walsh said. “That’s the difference from last year.”

Last year, the seniors on the team floundered, and with them went Harvard’s season. By the time Brown came up on the schedule, the games had been rendered meaningless.

Not so this year.

“We’re ready to come out and we’re ready to take them,” Douglas said.

—Staff writer Jay M. Cohen can be reached at jaycohen@fas.harvard.edu.