Baseball splits series with Lions

The Penn baseball team split home-and-home twinbills with Gehrig rival Columbia. The Penn baseball team went into a pair of doubleheaders this past weekend against Columbia with high expectations. After all, the Quakers (5-11, 2-2 Ivy League) swept the Lions (6-9, 2-2) in all four games in '98, winning each time by at least nine runs. Add to that the Quakers' strong hitting in recent wins over UMBC and Lehigh and a great opening to the Ivy season seemed likely. But despite an amazing weekend by the Penn pitching staff, periodic lapses on defense and at the plate did in the Quakers -- as Columbia snuck away with two one-run victories and a split of the weekend's four games. Penn won Saturday's nightcap and Sunday's opener by 6-2 and 7-4 margins but missed opportunities in the other outings and dropped difficult 4-3 and 2-1 decisions. "No question -- the two losses could have gone either way," Penn coach Bob Seddon said. "I thought we could have done better. [Yesterday's] loss was a heartbreaker -- Columbia won it in the last at-bat after we tied it with two outs in the seventh." Despite four home runs by four different Quakers over the two-day span, the story of the weekend was clearly Penn's starting pitching. The young staff came through with a weekend ERA of 2.00 -- lowering its '99 average by over 1 1/2 runs in the process. "Our pitching is much better this year," Seddon said of a staff that includes five freshmen. "There's no question that we're building on something special here." Penn sophomore Matt Hepler started Saturday off on the right foot, allowing four hits in six innings in the Ivy opener. But four errors behind Hepler and eight Penn runners stranded on the basepaths enabled the Lions to pull out an unlikely 4-3 road victory. The turning point of this game came in the sixth. In the top half, a poor bouncing throw back to the infield allowed Lions senior Hawkeye Wayne to alertly take second base after he singled. Two batters later, Wayne scored the game's winning run on what otherwise might have been a harmless single. In the bottom of the inning, with the tying run on second and one out, Lions hurler Bill Brunner struck out two consecutive Quakers to end the threat. Although the first came on a questionable check-swing that got the crowd and bench irate -- and reminiscing about the brawl that occurred at the '98 games -- it was not enough to spur Penn to a comeback. "We were disappointed with the way we played in the first game on Saturday -- we basically threw that game away," said Quakers sophomore third baseman Jim Mullen, who countered two hits with two errors in the loss. "But in the second game we were able to put together some hits and have a big inning early." And Penn bounced back in Saturday's second game in a big way. Five runs in the bottom of the first gave the Quakers an early cushion on their way to a 6-2 victory. A home run by captain Glen Ambrosius, two hits apiece by Anthony Napolitano and Kevin McCabe and four stolen bases paved the way to the 'W'. Penn's Mike Mattern, who continues to impress in his freshman campaign, worked out of a first-inning jam to pick up his fourth win of '99. His five-hit, six-strikeout effort was the first of three Quakers' complete games on the weekend. Yesterday, Penn traveled away from the confines of pitcher-friendly Bower Field to Columbia's Coakley Field, trying to carry over the momentum from its win to end the first day. In the opener, the Quakers got what they needed on the mound again -- this time from junior Sean McDonald. The righthander worked his way out of his only tough inning of the day -- the fourth -- by striking out the side en route to his first win of '99. Powered by home runs from Jeff Gregorio, Ralph Vasami and Chris May, the Quakers put a five-spot on the scoreboard again -- this time in the third frame of the 7-4 win. Penn's 12 hits meant the Quakers left just six runners on and thankfully offset two more Quakers miscues on defense. In the nightcap, freshman Mark Lacarenza was strong -- the fourth straight Penn starter to give up a meager two earned runs in the series. Unfortunately, while Lacarenza was silencing the Lions, Penn was also stymied by Lions starter Ryan Kiernan and Brunner in relief -- falling 2-1 in extra innings. But the Quakers did not fall easily, putting together three of their five hits in the seventh and final inning to tie -- and almost take the lead. In the eighth, though, the Lions were able to knock home a run on what Seddon called a "seeing-eye" single, handing Lacarenza a fiercely contested 'W'. "This is a young team that has to learn to win two games in a day," Seddon said. "That's what I told them after the games today. But they played well and they played hard the entire weekend."