Each time Vance gloved a catch or swung the bat—which, in a three-for-five day at the top of the order, often met with happy results—the cheers rang louder.

“I think what we’re going to take away from this tournament,” Harvard coach Joe Walsh said, “is that Matty Vance was capable of playing down here.”

In leading off the third inning with the Crimson down 9-3, Vance engineered a mini-comeback of his own. The 6’0, 180-pound rookie tagged a soaring double off the left-centerfield wall—just two feet short of a home run and above the 385-foot indicator—and later scored on a one-out Lance Salsgiver sacrifice fly.

“He just was driving the ball,” Walsh said. “Every time he got up there you felt like he was the one guy in the lineup that was going to hit it right on the nose. You just felt good every time he’d get up to the plate.”

Success was fleeting for Harvard during the NCAA Regionals—but for two local products, it was an especially poignant season’s end.

Just as Schuyler Mann’s Crimson career faded to twilight where it all began, Matt Vance’s burned anew.

“Great to see one of the hometown boys do well,” Mann laughed.

And then he strode off into the western sunset; it was dinner time with the family.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.