Prince-stung

After winningAfter winningGehrig playoff vs.After winningGehrig playoff vs.Penn, Tigers beatAfter winningGehrig playoff vs.Penn, Tigers beatCrimson for crown The Gehrig Divison playoff game was tied at four when Princeton centerfielder Michael Hazen stepped up to the plate. Penn reliever Sean McDonald checked the loaded bases behind him, went into his motion and delivered the pitch. Hazen lifted the ball into center field. On third base, Tigers senior Thomas Hage waited. As the fly ball dropped into Penn centerfielder Drew Corradini's glove, Hage tagged up and headed for home. And the Tigers celebrated. After coming back from a four-run deficit, the Quakers lost their chance to play in the Ivy League baseball championship series, falling to Princeton 5-4. The Tigers went on to sweep the best-of-three Ivy championship series over Rolfe Division champion Harvard. Stop me if you've heard this one. Penn and Princeton are co-division champions. The two teams meet for a one-game playoff to decide who continues to play and who goes home. Like the men's basketball team, the Penn baseball team was in exactly that position last week. And like the hoops team, the Quakers wound up with an early vacation. The Penn baseball team was lucky to even be in the playoff, backing in when the Tigers failed to clinch the division outright. The Quakers controlled their own destiny when the two teams met in Princeton three weeks ago for a four-game series. Two Penn victories would have given the Quakers the Gehrig division title. But Princeton swept the four games, putting the Tigers in control. Three victories in a home-and-away series with Cornell and Princeton would snatch the Gehrig crown. Penn was given another chance when Cornell upset the Tigers. Princeton could only muster two victories, creating a tie for the division title. The teams were set to meet at Trenton State College on May 8 to decide which school would move on to the Ivy championship series. But the contest was cancelled only hours before gametime because Moody Field was flooded. The game was rescheduled for May 9 at Penn's Bower Field. "We thought we should have been here anyway," Penn right fielder Sean Turner said. "We blew it that last weekend when we let them sweep us. We felt it was ours to win once we had that second chance. We came in very upbeat." As Princeton righty Benjamin Smith took the mound to start the playoff, the Quakers were standing and cheering in the dugout. Princeton was quiet. They would not stay that way for long. In the bottom of the second inning, Penn lefty Mike Greenwood walked three Tigers to load the bases. One batter later, Greenwood walked centerfielder Justin Griffin to send in the Tigers' first run. A double play ended the inning, but Princeton was not done. The Tigers exploited Greenwood's wildness in the third inning, adding three more runs. Hage led off the inning with a double to the right field wall. First baseman Michael Ciminello followed that with a two-run homer to right. A wild throw by Penn shortstop Mark DeRosa turned second baseman Michael Keck's grounder into a single. He scored two batters later on a sacrifice fly. Greenwood had settled down, but too late. The score remained 4-0 Princeton until the top of the eighth inning. "I knew what I was doing wrong," Greenwood said. "I knew what I had to do. I knew we'd score runs, so I knew if I held them there we'd come back and make a run at it and we did." The Quakers started the eighth with three straight singles, driving a run across the plate and Smith from the game. Lefthander Joseph Machado replaced him and got Penn designated hitter Mark Nagata to pop up to catcher Peter Silletti. In a lefty-righty switch, Princeton's ace closer Chris Yarbrough took the mound. But the Quakers caught a second wind. First baseman Armen Simonian knocked a bouncer past diving second baseman David Ekelund, scoring DeRosa. Penn third baseman Derek Nemeth's fly ball dropped in front of Griffin, sending Turner home. And the game was tied. It was Penn's turn to be raucous, while the Tigers sat mute. But pinch hitter Dave Corleto struck out swinging and Corradini lofted a fly ball to right field, ending the inning. And despite having two men on with no one out in the ninth, the Quakers could not drive another run across the plate. In the bottom of the ninth, after Greenwood let Hage get on base with a liner to right, McDonald got the call in the bullpen On McDonald's first pitch, Ciminello bunted Hage to second. Seddon called for an intentional walk to be issued to Keck. And as McDonald walked the next batter, loading the bases with only one out, the worries began. One pitch later, the Penn baseball season came to an end. "We were ready," Turner said. "They just came through." And like the men's basketball team before them, the Quakers will have a long break to think about what might have happened if only they could have gotten one more victory over Princeton.

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