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