FULLERTON, Calif.—By turns coincidental and sublimely appropriate, the past and future of Harvard baseball parted where both had begun.

Palm trees and strip malls alone didn’t dominate the Fullerton landscape—so, too, did Schuyler Mann and Matt Vance, SoCal natives both, who strapped on their spikes as teammates for the final time.

For Mann, the gracious Crimson captain who learned to play the game as a nine-year-old Los Angelino, yesterday’s 14-6 loss to Missouri was the end of an illustrious collegiate career and—pending developments in this week’s MLB Draft—a potential new beginning.

“The door’s not closing on baseball,” he said of the draft, which takes place Tuesday and Wednesday. “We’ll see. I’m not too familiar with the whole process. Maybe some teams will be interested in me.”

On a dazzling Saturday afternoon at Fullerton’s Goodwin Field, the only element that belied the scenic tranquility was Harvard’s uncharacteristically messy play.

Mann, the power-hitting Crimson catcher, woke up his teammates with a rocket shot into the stands just beyond the home dugout to lead off the second. In the same at-bat, he bounded Harvard’s first hit of the day through the infield and, following a Steffan Wilson groundout, scored the Crimson’s first run of the NCAA Tournament.

Several of his relatives—“my grandma, aunts, uncles, cousins,” he said—cheered from the stands. It was a banner moment for Los Angeles’ native son, who despite spending his adolescence in Trumbull, Conn., and at Harvard College, never quite left home.

“It was definitely something I was thinking about,” he said.

The day wasn’t all good news. In the last at-bat of Mann’s career—runners waited on second and third in the bottom of the ninth with a two-out, 14-6 deficit to overcome—the captain struck out to end the game. The final pitch: a called strike on a 3-2 fastball that looked inside. Gracefully, Mann bowed out and shook hands with the opposing team.

“It was definitely not the way you want to end it,” he said. “It’s hard to think of the high points of the year after a loss like this.”

On second thought…

“We had such a successful season,” he said, growing pensive. “It was just a great group of guys to play with.”

For Vance, Harvard’s swaggering freshman leadoff man, the day wasn’t an end—it was an inauguration of promise.

A graduate of Torrey Pines High School outside of San Diego, Vance looked more like a Hollywood product as he confidently strode to the plate, the delightful squeals of his personal cheering section turning crowd heads.

Television cameramen made a point to catch some of the makeshift placards—“Matt is Hot!” read one—that Vance’s friends had drawn up.