150 Years of Baseball

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Lafayette – Lehigh is college football’s most played rivalry.  The two teams first met in 1884.  This coming season, they will play their 155^th game.  They celebrated #150 in grand style with the game being held before a huge crowd at Yankee Stadium.

The Lafayette-Lehigh baseball rivalry is even older, although it is not the oldest collegiate rivalry.  Williams played Amherst in 1859, ten full years before the Lafayette Nine took on Lehigh.

This past Wednesday, the two teams played each other at Kamine Stadium to celebrate 150 years of intercollegiate baseball for the two teams.  They first competed on the diamond in 1869.  It was the first intercollegiate baseball contest for Lafayette.  The game ended, mercifully, I guess, in a 45-45 tie.

Lafayette became the first winner of the series when they defeated Lehigh 31-24 in the next meeting.  That game was played at Lehigh.  The two teams have met 395 times and will hit the 400 mark next year.

Here are a few facts about the rivalry:

• The most lopsided victory in the rivalry came on May 4, 1874, when the Leopards won the game in Bethlehem 88-20 in just four innings.

• In 2007, the Leopards finished the year with an overall record of 32-17 en route to their first Patriot League title. During the regular season, the Leopards went 17-3 in the Patriot League.

• Few men can claim to having played on championship teams on the collegiate and professional levels, as can Lafayette’s two-sport great, Mike Gazella. Upon graduation, Gazella played for the Yankees World Championship teams in 1923, 1927, and 1928 as a utility infielder, and played on the Yankees American League championship team in 1926. He enjoyed his finest season in 1927 when he hit .278 while playing third base behind the great Joe Dugan.

• As a baseball standout and catcher, Joe Maddon played three years of baseball under Norm Gigon and helped the Leopards to a 49-28 record during that span. Initially recruited to play football, Maddon played one season as a quarterback on the team. In his final game, he completed 14 of 17 passes for four touchdowns in a win over Lehigh. Following his tenure at Lafayette, Maddon spent four seasons as a catcher in the Anaheim Angels’ minor league system. After his playing career ended, he remained with the organization in several roles, including minor league manager and bench coach for the Angels, who advanced to the postseason three times and captured the 2002 World Series title. His second World Series title came as Manager of the Chicago Cubs in 2016 when he led the team to their first tile in 108 years.

• 1953 was the year of Lafayette’s first College World Series team. The 1953 Lafayette baseball team finished with a 20-6-2 mark with wins over Pitt and Penn State in the NCAA District 2 Playoffs in Easton, PA to qualify for the College World Series.  At the College World Series, the Leopards beat Colorado State College, Stanford and Boston College while losing twice to Texas, which later advanced to the title game. Lafayette finished third in the CWS. The 1953 Lafayette squad managed a 12-game winning streak midway through the season, and Ronnie Owen set a program record for victories in a season with 12.

• Lafayette has had four home fields. The third home field for the Lafayette Nine was Fisher Stadium. The Leopards began playing on Fisher in 1926 and saw a great deal of success during this time. Fisher was the home field for all four College World Series Teams in 1953, 1954, 1958, and 1965.  They currently play at the Metzger Field complex at Kamine Stadium.

• Starting with the first game in October of 1869, the Lafayette Nine hold an impressive 231-160-3 record over rival Lehigh.

• Lafayette College is the only NCAA Division I athletic department to feature a Leopard Mascot. The new 2019 throwbacks are the only uniforms at Lafayette to say Leopards across the chest.

  

ABOVE THE EARS (SOME MUSINGS) 

1. You may have missed it, but Albert Pujols passed Babe Ruth for career RBIs this past weekend. He hit his 636^th home run and got to 1,993 RBIs. He is now in fifth place in MLB history. Ahead of him are Lou Gehrig (1,994), Barry Bonds (1,996), Alex Rodriguez (2,086), and Hank Aaron (2,297).

2. Christian Yelich of the Milwaukee Brewers is the reigning NL MVP and he has not slowed down to start this season. As of Saturday, he has hit 13 home runs in April and tied the team record.  There are plenty of days left in the month.

3. I don’t know if this will make umpires more or less appealing to the fans, but umpire Jeff Nelson in a Blue Jays–Athletics game on Saturday literally tackled a fan who had come out of the stands. Coming from left field, the fan was met by Adams at second base and flung to the ground.  I wonder if he will get additional security service pay.

4. On Saturday, Joel Embiid scored 31 points, had 16 rebounds, seven assists, six blocks, and two steals in the Sixers’ win over Brooklyn in game four. He became only the sixth player since 1974 to have at least 30 points, five rebounds, five assists and five blocks in a playoff game.  And he played just 32 minutes.

5. Lafayette’s spring football practice officially came to a close with the Maroon-White game this past Saturday. Twenty players sat out due to preseason injuries so not much could be gleaned from the showing.  There are plenty of questions remaining, most notably who will be the starting quarterback in August when the Leopards open their season. That answer did not appear either.