In his last at-bat against Harvard last week, Brad Rifkin '09 stepped awkwardly on first base and broke a bone in his foot. It wasn't too serious - the broken bone was an extra bone that had troubled him in the past - but it was still another setback to the first baseman who didn't play much early in the season as he recovered from a knee injury.
But Head Coach Marek Drabinski asked Rifkin this week if there was any way he could play this weekend against Yale, so Rifkin visited three doctors and was cleared to play. His coaches and teammates are thrilled about that decision now. In front of an ecstatic home crowd, Rifkin drilled what proved to be the game-winning double to help the Bears win its first-ever outright Red Rolfe division title.
With two men on in the bottom of the fifth inning Sunday, Rifkin smacked the first pitch he saw from Yale starter Brandon Josselyn to deep centerfield to drive in both runs in what turned out to be a 2-0 win.
"It was a first-pitch fastball," Rifkin said. "That's what I figured as I was on the on-deck circle. I figured, as the (No. 9) hitter, they didn't want to turn it over to the top of the lineup."
Entering the day with a two-game lead on Harvard, the Bears needed one win or a Crimson loss to clinch the division title. They got both. The Crimson split its final doubleheader against Dartmouth to finish second in the division, with a 12-8 league record. Meanwhile, the Bears dropped their second game to Yale, 7-5, to finish 14-6 in league play, 20-18 overall.
After Rifkin's shot, starting pitcher Jeff Dietz '08 took care of the Bulldogs in the last two innings, though things got tense in the top of the sixth. After Dietz gave up a leadoff double, Ryan Lavarnway, the league leader in batting average and home runs and a favorite to win the Ivy League Player of the Year award, stepped to the plate. But Dietz struck out Lavarnway swinging, on a full count pitch and then retired the last two batters of the inning. He then pitched a perfect seventh to finish a complete-game five-hitter.
After the Bulldogs' last batter flied out, the Brown bench, which had been standing for most of the inning with nervous anticipation, burst out of the dugout to mob Dietz at the mound. The players then lined up for spirited high fives, which were soon replaced by hugs.
Head Coach Marek Drabinski was the last person out of the Brown dugout. As his players celebrated on the field, he took a moment to collect his thoughts. The feeling didn't hit him immediately after the last out, he said, but when it did, he was on "cloud nine."
"Eleven years it took," to make it to the Championship Series, said Drabinski, who has been at Brown for that long. "We've been so close before. We've had two (one-game) playoffs and we came up short."
Drabinski looked elated as he spoke about his player's perseverance this season: Rifkin playing through injuries, Dietz starting three games in nine days. On Senior Day, the coach was thrilled for his seniors, who would finally have the opportunity to play in a Championship Series.
"This is the best class of seniors I've ever coached," he said. "They lead by example, they do some of the coaching themselves. It's such a great feeling."
Dietz echoed his coach's words.
"It feels great, it's a first step," the right-hander said. He then thought about the setbacks in previous seasons, before saying, "When you get that close, you kind of wonder what it feels like, and now I know."
Next weekend, the Bears will play the University of Pennsylvania, the Lou Gehrig division champions, in the Championship Series. The three-game series, which will consist of a doubleheader on Saturday and, if necessary, a single game on Sunday, will be held at Brown's Murray Stadium because the Bears finished the season with a better league record than the Quakers. All three games will be nine innings. Penn will play the second game of the doubleheader as the home team.
Brown split its two-game series with the Quakers, who finished with 12-8 in the league and 20-18 overall.
The Bears have not made it to the Championship Series since 1993, when the Ivy League switched to its current two-division format. From 1948 to 1992, the Bears had played in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League, which included the eight Ivy League institutions, as well as Army and Navy. Brown only won the EIBL title once, when it shared it with Cornell in 1952.
