Baseball Review // Brown Bears, 2 Yale Bulldogs, 3 April 16th, 2022 @ Bush Field, New Haven CT (Ivy League)

Photos on Facebook :::

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=raisedbycassettes&set=a.7386304264744417

Official Box Score :::

https://yalebulldogs.com/sports/baseball/stats/2022/brown/boxscore/16273

Though we technically attended our first live baseball game of 2022 a few days before at Wesleyan University, it only felt right to begin the reviewing of baseball this year with the Yale Bulldogs as their season had been underway and we were finally able to make the trip out for a game.  With the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty in what would happen when we went to what was now dubbed Bush Field because Yale University has their own set of rules for staying safe and it had been a few years since the Ivy League played baseball.  

The Bulldogs have generally been a good baseball team and this didn't seem to be something that was changing this season.   It was overcast at times, but for the most part the weather held off of raining and it even got sunny at times as we sat behind home plate and watched all of the action.   One of the first things I noticed when entering Bush Field though is the baseballs with alumni names on them which once lined the walls no longer do.  I wonder if they had just painted and will return eventually.  There was also concessions up behind the press box, which was an odd place but at least it was there and allowed me to have my first baseball pretzel of the year.

When it comes to close games, they don't get much closer than this one was.  Between the Bears pitcher Bobby Olsen and Bulldogs pitcher Mike Walsh, this game had minimal scoring and it even seemed difficult for a lot of the game even just to get onto base.  If someone got into a jam with runners in scoring position, it was likely gotten out of and that made this anyone's game throughout the entirety of it.   It was exciting in that way.

Yale scored the first run in the bottom of the first inning to hold the lead through three innings.  In the top of the fourth inning, the Bears would score a single run via HR and then they would do the same in the fifth with another solo homer.  This briefly put the Bears up 2-1, but the Bulldogs would score again in the bottom of the fifth, leaving the game tied 2-2 up until the very end.  This second run for Yale also came off of a Jimmy Chatfield homerun.

This really just felt like that type of game where it could break open at any minute and either team could go up by four or more runs, making it seem difficult for the other team to catch up, but both teams played defense to the extent that didn't happen.   In the bottom of the tenth inning, Yale scored to walk it off and it really did feel like if Brown had scored first in the top of the inning they would've won and kept Yale from scoring again.

Even though Yale is in the middle of the standings and Brown was near the bottom, this wasn't the type of blowout match it could have been thought to be- there was no easy win here.   But as far as baseball games go, the ones I seem to enjoy the most are the ones which are the most nerve-wracking and leave it up until the very end to see who will win.   A huge lead win would've been nice, but somehow this was more satisfying.