Greg Ambrosius had just delivered an RBI single to give the Penn baseball team a 13-12 lead over Saint Joseph's in the first game ever played at the Ballpark Formerly Known as Murphy Field in 2000.
It was the bottom of the eighth inning, and the Hawks needed a comeback.
But there was none be had.
Because as soon as Oliver Hahl touched the plate for the go-ahead run, the game was called due to darkness.
A win for the Quakers. A loss for the game of baseball.
Six years and two days later, the Quakers were taking on Columbia in Saturday's 11:30 a.m. doubleheader. The first game, which was only scheduled to go seven went to an extra inning, and the second was tied at seven in the eighth inning.
Hardly unusual circumstances.
But again, the umpires got together and that was that. The ninth inning would be played in New York the next day.
Fans who had endured six hours of the doubleheader were left with the choice of driving to New York the next morning or leaving the ballpark knowing that they would never see the conclusion of a close game.
And Penn was left with two options: petition the sun to keep later hours or install lights at Meiklejohn Stadium.
There is no plan in the works to do the latter, Athletics Director of Facilities and Operations Dave Bryan said.
Certainly, installing lighting for the stadium would not be easy with Interstate 76 and a cooling plant nearby in what is already a tight space.
The stadium currently has lights lining the outfield, but those are far too weak to illuminate the field at night.
Similar challenges were overcome, however, in the successful installation that took place at Rhodes Field during the 2005 soccer season.
Baseball and softball are the only major team sports without a clock, so games can go on all night.
Even in softball, which is a lower-scoring, seven-inning game, the lack of lighting can be an issue. The second game of the Quakers' doubleheader at Lehigh was halted in the fifth inning due to darkness.
But this is especially the case in college baseball, where metal bats contribute to scores which routinely get into the teens or even the twenties, and games seem to go all day and into the night.
Lights preserve the integrity of the game by ensuring that nine-inning games can go nine innings, and making sure they are finished on the same field that they started on.
But lights could also have another consequence, especially at Penn, where baseball is consistently beaten by lacrosse in the attendance figure.
Night games would be a novelty at the University.
I don't know too many students willing to get up for an 11:30 first pitch on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Nor do I know too many people willing to skip out of work or out of an afternoon class to go watch 3 p.m. weekday starts.
As yesterday's double-digit attendance figure for a game against local rival St. Joe's indicates, something has to be done.
After all, the reason for the lighting at the soccer field was attendance, Bryan said.
"At soccer, the schedule is such that oftentimes the soccer games conflicted with football," he said, adding that the lighting was an effort to allow more students to attend both events.
Even without this motivation during baseball season, somebody should take a hard look at what happened on Saturday, what happened on the opening day at Murphy Field and what happened Tuesday at Villanova when the game was called in the eighth inning.
And when they do, they should realize that when a game with no clock is forced to conform to nature's clock, nine full innings are never a guarantee.
Good thing daylight-saving time is just around the corner.
Zachary Levine is a junior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
