Harvard Splits With Columbia

Read all about it. Some thoughts...

* People Who Impressed Me:
1. Brad Unger, who undoubtedly deserves to be starting. A hard-luck loser today, Unger struggled early but settled in and consistently threw strikes. I'll put some video footage of him up later in the week if I get time.
2. Jake Bruton. He'd been having a solid spring, but I hadn't put a lot into that until getting to see why today. I'll put up some footage of him as well, but Jake has some zip on his fastball I don't remember being there, and was incredibly efficient (including a six or seven pitch inning).
3. Tom Stack-Babich, who homered early in the second game and seems over his difficult first season.

* Eric Eadington: In a Sons of Bart Brush multimedia first, here is Boomer Eadington's first-ever inning of Ivy League baseball, a 1-2-3 start against the Lions. Great mound presence, good fastball, and a curve that made some hitters straight up look silly at some points (I may post a couple more of the more interesting swings from later in the game).

Unfortunately, things went a bit downhill from here, and Boomer never looked comfortable again. He was wilder even than the boxscore indicates, and seemed vulnerable to aggressive baserunning (the "ba-a-a-ack!" calls--accurate ones--came quite a bit earlier on pickoffs than one would like). That said, it was freezing, and he's from California.

* Andrew Prince, who just looks like a kid who's going to hit a lot of home runs, has hamstring issues that kept him out of action this weekend. Hopefully they won't nag for too long.

* Assistant Coach Gary Donovan was tossed for arguing early in the second game, and Head Coach Joe Walsh followed after protesting the ejection. I won't describe what happened immediately after that, but let's just say that as a fan of the late 90s-early 2000s Mets, it warmed my heart.

* I'd never been to a game at Columbia, but it is immediately my favorite road ballpark, as it is easily the worst. The field hangs on the small patch on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Harlem River and is a victim of both the river's constraints and those of the football field adjacent to it. Deep center is about 300 feet--tops, there is almost no foul territory on either line, you can homer into the river, and every game features a continuous cacophany of Metro North trains running on the other side of the river between Grand Central and points north punctuated by the occasional loud boat running alongside. It is absolutely charming.