Monday, April 29, 2024

There's A New Home Run Champion

The Princeton baseball team played its first game in 1864.

It was actually the first intercollegiate athletic event in Princeton history, that baseball game against Williams. TigerBlog has always loved the fact that the final score of the first baseball game Princeton ever played was 27-16, while the score of the first football game — five years later — was 6-4.

TB isn't sure how great the record-keeping was in the 19th century, but he does know that it's been pretty good in the last 100 years or so. And so, when the record book has said for the past 25 years that the record for home runs in a career was held by Matt Evans (also a three-time first-team All-Ivy League punter), with 26, TB thinks that's pretty accurate.

Ah, but as was said on TV in 1974, there's a new home run champion, and his name is Kyle Vinci. 

The Princeton senior hit his 27th career home run during a doubleheader sweep of Dartmouth Saturday in Hanover, with scores of 14-5 and 11-3. He added his 28th yesterday, on an inside-the-park variety, as Princeton won again, this time 5-3.

Here is the record-setter:

The record is great. It's certainly impressive, and who doesn't want to say "I'm the home run king."

Oh, by the way, Vinci played on the same high school team at Delbarton at current New York Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe. If you want to learn more about Vinci, you can read THIS, which TB wrote about him a year ago, before the Ivy tournament.

More important than the record — and on the subject of the Ivy League tournament, this Princeton team has put together a season based on grit as much as anything else, given the amount of injuries it has suffered, especially on the mound. 

Nobody typifies that more than Jacob Faulkner, who picked up two more saves this weekend, closing out Game 2 Saturday with a three-inning performance and then Game 3 yesterday with one inning. 

Will Sword pitched eight strong innings yesterday to get the win in the first game of the weekend, allowing three runs on six hits. The Game 2 win went to Elliot Eaton, who went six innings and allowed one run on five hits, striking out six, before turning it over to Faulkner. It was the first win of the year for Eaton. 

Then, yesterday, Sean Episcope pitched four shutout innings before Andrew D'Alessio went four more, improving to 3-0, before Faulkner got his fourth save.

Suddenly the Tigers find themselves at 11-7 in the Ivy League, in second place with one weekend of games to play. Princeton, who plays at Rutgers Wednesday at 6 in its final non-league game, finishes the regular season with three at Columbia.

The goal is for there to be additional games at Columbia after that. 

The Lions have already wrapped up the Ivy League championship and the host role in the league tournament, which will be May 17-20. Who will join the Lions for that event? 

Princeton is in second place, followed by Cornell at 10-8 and Penn and Yale at 9-9. Harvard is 8-10, and then it goes back to Dartmouth at 6-12 and Brown at 4-14. 

The season doesn't actually end this weekend, since Harvard and Yale don't play until May 11-12 in New Haven, for reasons of which TB has no idea. This weekend has Dartmouth at Penn and Cornell at Brown, in addition to Princeton-Columbia.

The Tigers hold the tiebreaker head-to-head with Penn, having taken two of three. Princeton does not have the tiebreaker against Harvard or Yale, having lost two of three to each.

A year ago, Princeton made it to the final of the first Ivy tournament. What will it take to get back? 

If Princeton wins twice against Columbia, then it will clinch an Ivy spot no matter what else happens. Princeton could also get in with either one win or no wins, depending on what else happens. It's also possible that it will go past this coming weekend, all the way to Harvard-Yale in another week.

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