On Saturday, March 26 the Fairfield baseball team hosted the Harvard Crimsons for a double header at Alumni Diamond. Fairfield’s bats struggled against Harvard’s starting pitcher Nick Gruener who pitched a complete game going seven innings, striking out five Stags and only allowing the Crimsons to a 7-1 victory.

“Their kid did a nice job, he’s a good pitcher that’s what all the scouts are out here to see today. He runs it up there, he’s got a breaking ball and he’s tough to score too many runs on,” said head coach Bill Currier on Harvard’s starting pitcher.

Harvard would strike first in the second inning scoring five runs. The Crimsons started the inning with a leadoff double, Fairfield’s starting pitcher Kyle Dube ‘17 struck out the following batter before hitting a batter and giving up a walk to load the bases with just one out in the inning.

Harvard’s Drew Reid came up to the plate and connected for a single to left to push in Harvard’s first run of the game. Dube struck out the next batter and was just one out away from escaping the inning with just one earned run. But on a 2-2 count, Harvard’s Mitch Klug smacked an RBI single to right center driving in two runners to give Harvard a 3-0 lead.

The Crimson’s bats would continue to stay hot as they added two more runs by the end of the inning to increase their lead to 5-0.

“You can’t give a few things away and then leave a couple balls up and not give up a few runs and that’s just about what happened,” said Currier of the second inning for Fairfield.

Down 5-0 in the fourth inning, Fairfield would score a run to cut the lead down to four. Senior Jake Salpietro got himself on base after hitting it to the gap in right center for a triple. Junior Troy Scocca stepped up to the plate with a runner in scoring position and drove him in on a single to right field for Fairfield’s lone run in the game.

Harvard would answer back the following inning, with two more runs to increase their lead to 7-1 after five innings of play. Due to the fact that the game was set for seven innings, made it twice as difficult as Fairfield had to battle back with limited time. “Seven inning game, it doesn’t give you give you much time, it’s a mini-game and pretty soon you’re bunting in the second and third inning because you only got three or four more left so it’s a different mindset, little different strategy,” said Currier of the game.

Fairfield would fail to score another run as they fell to the Crimsons by a final score of 7-1. This being the first game of a double header, the Stags looked to regroup and bounce back in the second game. When asked what the team should do differently in game two, Currier said, “Well, hopefully we hustle everything out and we get aggressive at the plate and hit balls that are capable in the zone and score some runs.”

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