Baseball drops first, explodes to take next three from Quakers

It is the end of the day. Despite fulfilling wins against Columbia last weekend, Princeton baseball is hungry. This weekend against Penn (20-15 overall, 6-10 Gehrig Divi-sion) was much like a meal. It started with a salad, which is the same as saying that things started out slowly. After all, who wants to munch on lettuce when it just gets in the way of the main course?

Not the Tigers. Princeton led 1-0 up until the bottom of the seventh inning. It was like having lobster laid out before you but then having your mom take it away. Salad first.

A disappointed Princeton squad complied — but not for long. After dropping the first game of two doubleheaders to Penn, 2-1, Princeton rebelled and skipped right to dessert — and had three servings.

The Tigers (17-19, 11-5) exploded past Penn in the next three matchups, leaving the Quakers behind 6-4, 8-2 and 8-7.

"We were pretty tense at first," senior center fielder Mickey Martin said. "Because we knew we would face their top two pitchers first. We had a lot of runs not come through that were in scoring position."

The Penn pitching staff held Princeton to only five hits in the first contest. But the loss was still surprising considering that sophomore righthander Ryan Quillian — who has had three consecutive wins and, most recently, threw a shutout against Columbia — pitched.

"He's doing his job but we haven't been giving him much run support," Martin said. "And it happened again."

Senior right fielder Max Krance singled in the top of the second inning and then advanced on a double by senior catcher Casey Hildreth before heading home on a wild pitch to give Princeton its lone run for the game.

This scenario was not repeated. The Tigers' bats woke up in the next three games, scoring at least six runs in each contest.

Another tight matchup Saturday shook Penn. The two teams were again tied late in the game, 3-3 heading into the eighth inning. But this time it was the Tigers who dominated in the final at-bats, bringing in one run in the eighth and two in the ninth.

For a time it looked as if the last inning could turn into a familiar nightmare. With one run for the inning already safely on the board, the Quakers had a runner on third, hoping to again spoil the Tigers' appetite. But senior left fielder Jon Watterson made the catch to end the game and give Princeton the confidence it needed to complete the weekend.

On Sunday the runs were unstoppable. A huge three-run first inning for Princeton was only a predictor of things to come. Senior first baseman Andrew Hanson led the carnage with three hits while Krance — who homered in the fifth inning for two RBI — was close behind with two.

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"Krance and Hanson were swinging the bats well," said Martin, who contributed four hits to the weekend. "And when they do well, our team fares well."

The second game on Sunday told a similar story. Penn jumped out to a 4-0 lead going into the fourth inning, but even that was not enough to negate the effort of Princeton's leading batters.

Krance — who was four-for-five for the game — started things out with a single in the fourth inning, during which the Tigers scored their first two runs of the game.

With Boran on first in the fifth inning, Hanson homered to knot the score, 4-4.

Princeton scored three more runs in the sixth inning while sophomore Eric Voelker homered in the seventh inning for the game-deciding run, ending the Tiger scoring spree.

"I finally got my confidence," Hanson said. "I kept things simple and started expecting to get hits."

Hanson and Krance ended the day with five runs apiece. But, like any good dessert, these wins have many layers, and are not simply about the bats.

"We had a good performance out of our bullpen," Martin said. "[Fresh-man Thomas] Pauly and [sophomore Mark] Siano did well in relief. Pauly especially did a really good job for us."

Heading into the final weekend of League play, the Tigers are in firm control of the Gehrig Division. Princeton needs only to win two of the four games against Cornell to secure itself a place in the Ivy League Championship Series. Things couldn't look sweeter.