After Dartmouth scored four runs in the bottom of the seventh, chasing Matt Brunnig, erasing what had once been a five-run deficit and tying the game at 9-9, Matt Vance stepped up and stroked a leadoff triple that sparked a five-run rally, exciting a Harvard bench you could hear over Dartmouth radio for the rest of the game.What followed was a remarkable display of hitting by Harvard and a sustained and astonishing show of defensive ineptitude by the Big Green. We'll take it. Harvard has won the Rolfe Division, beating Dartmouth 23-9 in what amounted to a one-game playoff for the division title. Harvard will host Princeton in the Ivy League Championship series on Saturday.
It wasn't the best Brunnig we've ever seen on the mound (I actually can't remember the last home run we had given up in Ivy play), but on the flip side, it was the best Brunnig we'd ever seen at the plate (3-for-5, 3 runs, 2 rbi, extra base hits numbers 1 and 2 on the season--and that was when the hits still mattered!). Josh Klimkiewicz hit a homer that still hasn't come down. Ditto Andrew Casey. Steffan Wilson came in to close it out, which I'm excited about as well.
More on this later. I'm very interested to see whether Adam Cole will start the second game against Princeton, but we've got a week to sort all of that out.
Hats off to Dartmouth and its players for a strong bounce-back season. The Dartmouth radio broadcasters (who were actually pretty good this year) noted that the Crimson players were calm and classy upon the end of the game, which of course computes.
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