BOSTON – Over the years, Fenway Park has seen its fair share of where-were-you-when moments.
Pesky, Fisk, Buckner, Ortiz: the list goes on and on and on, if you dig back far enough. Throughout the annals of baseball history, the games we tend to remember the longest are those ones that had one distinct moment, one lasting memory seared into our collective minds.
Tuesday evening’s Beanpot Championship between Harvard and Northeastern did not have one of those moments, but it was memorable in its own right. For eight innings, this one looked one-sided, but a late Crimson surge put the Huskies’ celebrations in jeopardy as they waited for a final out that seemed to never come.
When it finally came — a soft line drive snagged by a leaping Jack Doyle — the Northeastern dugout poured onto the field, gloves flew in the air like graduation caps, The Standells’ Dirty Water echoed around the old ballpark, and the Huskies lifted their eighth Beanpot trophy with a 5-4 win over Harvard.
While the game was close, the result itself wasn’t a surprising one; Northeastern (34-9) entered Tuesday’s championship round as heavy favorites over the Crimson (11-23). To boot, the Huskies had already proved their mettle over these same opponents earlier this season, having rolled over their neighbors to the north in a mid-March three-game sweep.
It was the underdogs that struck first on Tuesday, however. After NU starter Max Gitlin mowed down the first five batters he faced, Crimson third baseman Tyler Shulman jumped on an 0-2 fastball, depositing it ten rows beyond the Pesky Pole for a 1-0 lead.
Northeastern responded immediately through Alex Lane, who roped a two-out double off the Green Monster to drive in Doyle, who’d been hit by a pitch earlier in the inning. Somewhat surprisingly, Lane’s shot was the first hit off of Harvard starter Brian Dowling, who began Tuesday sporting an ERA well north of nine.
ERAs don’t pitch, though, and the Dowling that showed up to Fenway Park for the first four innings on Tuesday looked little like the Dowling that’d shown himself earlier in the season. The soft-tossing left-hander flummoxed Husky hitters, using a mix of well-located fastballs and slow, loopy breaking pitches to keep NU’s lineup off-balance.
Gitlin matched Dowling stride-for-stride, though. Northeastern’s own left-hander kept the Crimson quiet after the Shulman homer, and a big popout after a two-out triple ensured the teams hit the bottom of the fifth still knotted at 1-1.
“Same as [Gitlin]’s been doing all year,” said head coach Mike Glavine. “He’s just tough as nails, and he competes, he’s got great stuff, and he gives us a chance to win every time.”
The Northeastern half of the fifth began with Carmelo Musacchia smoking a ball 414 feet (thank you, Statcast) off the deepest part of the Monster wall for a triple before Lane’s second “Wall Ball” of the night chased him home. A Matt Brinker single put runners on the corners, and a Greg Bozzo sac fly scored Lane before Dowling issued a walk to Ryan Gerety, spelling the end of his day.
The party wouldn’t end there; freshman left-hander Charley Bergsma entered for Harvard and struggled, issuing free passes to Cam Maldonado and Harrison Feinberg (the latter of which forced in a run) before a Jack Goodman groundout brought home the fourth run of the inning to make it 5-1.
Disaster nearly struck in the sixth inning; with two outs, Harvard pinch-hitter Gavin Smith smacked a sharp ground ball in the direction of Northeastern star shortstop Jack Goodman. Goodman ranged to his left, dove, and snagged the bounding ball, but instead of getting up and firing to first, the Pepperdine transfer stayed down, writhing around in pain as a vibrant Fenway fell unnervingly silent.
Remarkably, Goodman stayed in the game, and the Huskies pitching stood tall. Jack Beauchesne and Cooper McGrath relieved Gitlin, in that order, and those two combined to both finish the sixth and set the Crimson down in order in the seventh and eighth.
Unfortunately for Northeastern, their offense couldn’t tack on insurance, flailing away wildly at two of Harvard’s least experienced pitchers in Bergsma and Andrew Abler. The teams hit the ninth inning with the score still at 5-1.
With the majority of the bullpen on short rest just 48 hours after a weekend sweep at Monmouth, it was McGrath who stayed out there for the ninth. He began it convincingly, striking out Matt Giberti before inducing a soft ground ball to third off the bat of Smith.
Doyle, the third baseman, gloved the chopper, but lost it somewhere in transition, allowing Smith to reach first. It was the Huskies’ first error of the day, and something of a surprise from the sure-handed Doyle.
Maybe McGrath simply tired, maybe the error unnerved him, or maybe he finally began to feel the weight of the moment. Whatever the reason, the big right-hander unraveled, walking the next two hitters to load the bases with just one out.
With the tying run at home plate, Brett Dunham entered for Northeastern, but a passed ball on his third pitch brought a run home and moved runners to second and third. On a 2-2 pitch, the Crimson’s Shulman — the man who got the scoring started — came through again, punching a breaking pitch past Goodman into center field, bringing home two runs in the process.
Representing the go-ahead run, the light-hitting catcher Liam Wilson stepped into the batter’s box, where he fouled off two pitches before striking out on an off-speed offering. With two outs, up stepped the second baseman Jordan Kang, hitting just .200 but certainly possessing the power (5 HRs on the season) to flip this game on its head with one swing of his bat.
With Fenway on its feet, Dunham started with a ball before coming across with a slider. Kang swung, slapping a line drive; for a split-second, it had all the makings of a game-tying double down the left field line.
Had Kang hit the ball an inch or two closer to the bat’s barrel, it may well have been. Instead, it was a high but playable line drive, one that Doyle — the man whose error opened the door earlier in the inning — jumped for, gloved without much problem, and by the time his feet hit the ground, the Huskies’ dugout was in full-fledged pandemonium.
The Beanpot championship was Northeastern’s second in two years, the first time the program had done that since 1994-95. To make matters even sweeter, it was a total team effort — there wasn’t one guy in particular you could point to as the engine of Tuesday’s win, making it a team accomplishment in every sense of the word.
“[We have] great culture, great leadership, great consistency,” said Glavine. “We weren’t great tonight… I thought we were a little nervous, to be honest with you. But, we found a way to get it done… I think that speaks to the leadership and the toughness of this team.”
Yes, the Beanpot isn’t the ultimate goal, especially not for a 34-9 Huskies team on a collision course with national postseason play. And, even when they won this same trophy last season, an equally talented Northeastern team couldn’t put it together again at the end of the year, flaming out of the CAA Tournament in a shocking upset. But, as anyone — especially Coach Glavine — will tell you, winning the Beanpot is a goal in itself, and one that nobody involved with Northeastern baseball will ever take lightly, especially at Fenway Park.
“It matters, you know?” said Glavine. “We want to win the Beanpot, we want to be the best team in New England, those are goals that we talk about. [Before] last year, we hadn’t won a Beanpot in a while… every time we play, this team has a feeling like it’s not just another game, and it’s really fun to coach.”
“The guys were super excited, but until you get here, you don’t know, and all of a sudden you get here, and it’s a great crowd, and you look at the wall, and you’re on a field you’ve seen a thousand times… to be out here, to be in Fenway Park, the history here, it’s pretty special.”
It certainly is. The Beanpot might not be the Commissioner’s Trophy, and Tuesday’s final might only be a footnote in the encyclopedic history of America’s Most Beloved Ballpark, but hoisting a trophy under the shadow of the Green Monster is something these Huskies should never forget, and I don’t anticipate they will.
Northeastern will look to continue their dominant season when Delaware comes to town for a three-game set, kicking off with Friday’s first pitch at 3 pm. Amelia Ballingall, Patrick O’Neal, and Dylan Black will be on your call on WRBBSports+.