Mohawks, Comebacks, and Spring Break

March 25

After years of not having a home field to compete on, the coaches decided to make the most of our new baseball field during spring break. So this past break we stayed on campus to practice, improve our skills, and play seven games. After going home for the first four days of spring break to see my parents, eat some home-cooked meals, and recuperate from the first half of the second semester, we were back in Poughkeepsie for the remainder of the break.

We practiced mostly on the turf field for the first few days leading up to our double-header against MIT, as the baseball field was still thawing after the cold winter. And as each day seemed to get progressively warmer, we could sense that baseball season was truly getting underway. But dropping both games to MIT showed us that we still had to shake the rust from the winter and start playing to our potential. As a reminder to play as a team with a never-say-die attitude, we decided to get team Mohawks. It was something the Tampa Bay Devil Rays did last season as they went from worst to first in their division. So we thought we would give it a try as well, at least during spring break, when most of the campus was away and wouldn’t see how ridiculous we looked.

Whether it was the Mohawks or the fact that we started feeding off each other’s intensity, our next game against Mt. St. Mary College featured one of the greatest comebacks I had ever been a part of. Down 10-0 heading into the fourth inning, we clawed our way back in the game by scoring three runs in the bottom of the fourth and four runs in the bottom of the fifth. But just as things started looking up, we surrendered another eight runs over the next two innings and failed to score on the offensive side. Heading into the eighth inning, the score was 18-7. But as the sky darkened in the bottom of the eighth, the hits became contagious. One after another, we crossed home plate, scoring ten runs and cutting the lead to one. After finally recording three outs, we sprinted on to the field to begin the ninth inning, but the umpires convened and called the game on account of darkness, spoiling our epic comeback.

It was disheartening, but we took from the game a sense that no matter how bad things get, we can always come back. It was this attitude that propelled us to our first Liberty League win of the season against Clarkson the next weekend, when we scored the winning run on a walk-off single. But after dropping the next three games to Clarkson, it appears that we will need to conjure up this never-say-die attitude once again.