Photo by: Matthew Shannon/AU Athletics
Ya Gotta Believe (in BC)!
March 08, 2021 | Baseball, #ForBoston Files
Down 9-1 with two outs in the ninth? Sure, no problem.
That... wasn't supposed to happen.
Not there. Not at one of the SEC's baseball cathedrals. Not against a power program that went to the College World Series in 2019 and won back-to-back regionals in each of the last two national tournaments. Not against the team with three straight NCAA Tournament appearances and four of the last five years before last year's cancellation. Not down eight runs with two outs in the top of the ninth.
Certainly not to Boston College.Â
In a game that will live in the annals of college baseball lore, the Eagles rallied from down eight runs on their last out to tie Auburn, and Luke Gold hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in the top of the 10th as No. 18 Boston College clinched its series against the No. 25 Tigers with an 11-9 victory.
It's hard not to be romantic about baseball.
The rally started innocently enough when Sal Frelick and Brian Dempsey singled around Cody Morissette's fly ball, but a flyout by Jack Cunningham registered a second out with the 9-1 Auburn advantage still intact. It was enough to get Cam Hill to the cusp of ending the game with a 1-2 count against Luke Gold, but the sophomore singled to right center to score Frelick from second. Cameron Leary did the same with a full-count by singling down the left field line to score Dempsey, but that only marginally shrank the lead to six. For his part, Hill never recorded the third out and was relieved after hitting Travis Honeyman on a 1-2 pitch to load the bases.
Seb Thomas entered the ballgame, with Frelick looming in the hole, but the same trouble with getting that third out plagued him. He walked Dante Baldelli on four straight pitches to cut the lead to 9-4, and Thomas delivered a fifth straight ball low before finally hitting the inside corner of the plate for his first strike. His 1-1 offering to Chris Galland, though, was grounded down the left field line, and two runs crossed to cut the lead to 9-6.
It sent a rippling anxiety through the Plainsman Park crowd, and Frelick, batting for the second time in the inning, turned it into a full-blown panic when he unloaded on an 0-1 fastball. Thomas missed his spot up high and left it up over the middle of the plate, and the left-handed first round prospect crushed it to deep right field. The pitcher turned and bent at the knees as Frelick flipped the bat, and the arm waves and shouts from the Boston College dugout drowned the deafening sound of the now-silenced stadium.
Auburn 9. Boston College 9.
Thomas retired the side on the next batter, but he never saw anything beyond that out. BC's ninth inning sent 10 men to the plate and scored eight times on six hits with none left on base. It happened against both the same burley righthander who threw more than two innings in Friday night's game and the same pitcher who struggled last weekend against Oklahoma.Â
More than that, it erased the five-run inning from earlier in the game and evaporated a dominant first eight innings by the host Tigers. It sent the game into extra innings when Joey Walsh stranded one in the bottom of the ninth, and it shell-shocked the entire Auburn team.Â
Auburn tabbed Peyton Glavine - the son of Baseball Hall of Famer and noted Billerica, Massachusetts native Tom Glavine - for the 10th, but Luke Gold dug the fifth pitch he faced - a 1-2 fastball low and inside - up into the left field air. The ball kept sailing and cleared the Green Monster-inspired left field wall for a two-run blast, his fourth of the season, to bring the BC dugout back out onto the field.
The fever pitch reached another crescendo in the bottom of the inning when Joey Walsh struck out Hill, who remained in the game as the designated hitter, and induced a fly ball before he struck out Kason Howell to end the game.Â
It touched off another celebration by the BC dugout, and the players clad in gray mobbed their closer. Walsh turned and rebel yelled as his teammates joined him on the hill, and the emotion spilled as the Eagles rejoiced in the moment. The team's two wins over Auburn clinched its first three-game series over an SEC opponent and won for just the fourth and fifth times over a team from the baseball blue blood conference.
Sunday was the third time in seven games BC went to extra innings lifetime against Auburn, and the Eagles earned their sixth win of the season when scoring first against an opponent, an irony considering what transpired in between the second and ninth innings. In the first time playing this season as a ranked team, the No. 18/No. 22 consensus national tournament contenders defeated a team poking its eyes back into the polls.
But it meant so much more to the perception of the program. Auburn is a nationally-recognized blue blood baseball program with five College World Series appearances and six NCAA Regional championships. The program was a near-guarantee for the national tournament in the 1990s through the early 2000s and rebounded from a 10-year lull when Butch Thompson took over in 2017.Â
It remains the program that produced Frank Thomas, Mark Bellhorn and Tim Hudson, with Hudson returning to serve as the current pitching coach. Bo Jackson hit .401 for the team in 1985 with 17 home runs and returned to hit seven homers in 22 games in 1986 after the controversy involving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Auburn's stadium, Plainsman Park, is a cathedral for college baseball and is in its seventh decade as the home of the Tigers. The stadium itself is a combination of influences from Camden Yards, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, and the left field wall is a replica of sorts of the Green Monster. In 2016, D1Baseball.com named it one of the best venues in college baseball. In a "normal season" outside of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 3,000 fans can pack into its chairs with more able to line its sightlines on the terrace.
That's why this series win is one for the Birdball ages. BC baseball is New England-based, a stigmatizing statement at times in college baseball, and played its first home game in front of the Pete Frates Center last week. A former Big East program, Boston College only recently started charging at the ACC with its NCAA Tournament appearances in 2009 and 2016, and its near-miss in 2019 included a berth in the ACC semifinals.
Winning the series reverberated through college baseball, but doing it in the dramatic fashion was an exclamation point. This wasn't an ordinary win, and it wasn't an ordinary series. The two teams weren't even scheduled to play each other until the middle of the week. But borne of the opportunity, BC seized it and sent a message to the rest of the college baseball universe that the romantic underdog in baseball is very much alive, and it resides in Chestnut Hill.
Not there. Not at one of the SEC's baseball cathedrals. Not against a power program that went to the College World Series in 2019 and won back-to-back regionals in each of the last two national tournaments. Not against the team with three straight NCAA Tournament appearances and four of the last five years before last year's cancellation. Not down eight runs with two outs in the top of the ninth.
Certainly not to Boston College.Â
In a game that will live in the annals of college baseball lore, the Eagles rallied from down eight runs on their last out to tie Auburn, and Luke Gold hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in the top of the 10th as No. 18 Boston College clinched its series against the No. 25 Tigers with an 11-9 victory.
It's hard not to be romantic about baseball.
The rally started innocently enough when Sal Frelick and Brian Dempsey singled around Cody Morissette's fly ball, but a flyout by Jack Cunningham registered a second out with the 9-1 Auburn advantage still intact. It was enough to get Cam Hill to the cusp of ending the game with a 1-2 count against Luke Gold, but the sophomore singled to right center to score Frelick from second. Cameron Leary did the same with a full-count by singling down the left field line to score Dempsey, but that only marginally shrank the lead to six. For his part, Hill never recorded the third out and was relieved after hitting Travis Honeyman on a 1-2 pitch to load the bases.
Seb Thomas entered the ballgame, with Frelick looming in the hole, but the same trouble with getting that third out plagued him. He walked Dante Baldelli on four straight pitches to cut the lead to 9-4, and Thomas delivered a fifth straight ball low before finally hitting the inside corner of the plate for his first strike. His 1-1 offering to Chris Galland, though, was grounded down the left field line, and two runs crossed to cut the lead to 9-6.
It sent a rippling anxiety through the Plainsman Park crowd, and Frelick, batting for the second time in the inning, turned it into a full-blown panic when he unloaded on an 0-1 fastball. Thomas missed his spot up high and left it up over the middle of the plate, and the left-handed first round prospect crushed it to deep right field. The pitcher turned and bent at the knees as Frelick flipped the bat, and the arm waves and shouts from the Boston College dugout drowned the deafening sound of the now-silenced stadium.
Auburn 9. Boston College 9.
Thomas retired the side on the next batter, but he never saw anything beyond that out. BC's ninth inning sent 10 men to the plate and scored eight times on six hits with none left on base. It happened against both the same burley righthander who threw more than two innings in Friday night's game and the same pitcher who struggled last weekend against Oklahoma.Â
More than that, it erased the five-run inning from earlier in the game and evaporated a dominant first eight innings by the host Tigers. It sent the game into extra innings when Joey Walsh stranded one in the bottom of the ninth, and it shell-shocked the entire Auburn team.Â
Auburn tabbed Peyton Glavine - the son of Baseball Hall of Famer and noted Billerica, Massachusetts native Tom Glavine - for the 10th, but Luke Gold dug the fifth pitch he faced - a 1-2 fastball low and inside - up into the left field air. The ball kept sailing and cleared the Green Monster-inspired left field wall for a two-run blast, his fourth of the season, to bring the BC dugout back out onto the field.
The fever pitch reached another crescendo in the bottom of the inning when Joey Walsh struck out Hill, who remained in the game as the designated hitter, and induced a fly ball before he struck out Kason Howell to end the game.Â
It touched off another celebration by the BC dugout, and the players clad in gray mobbed their closer. Walsh turned and rebel yelled as his teammates joined him on the hill, and the emotion spilled as the Eagles rejoiced in the moment. The team's two wins over Auburn clinched its first three-game series over an SEC opponent and won for just the fourth and fifth times over a team from the baseball blue blood conference.
Sunday was the third time in seven games BC went to extra innings lifetime against Auburn, and the Eagles earned their sixth win of the season when scoring first against an opponent, an irony considering what transpired in between the second and ninth innings. In the first time playing this season as a ranked team, the No. 18/No. 22 consensus national tournament contenders defeated a team poking its eyes back into the polls.
But it meant so much more to the perception of the program. Auburn is a nationally-recognized blue blood baseball program with five College World Series appearances and six NCAA Regional championships. The program was a near-guarantee for the national tournament in the 1990s through the early 2000s and rebounded from a 10-year lull when Butch Thompson took over in 2017.Â
It remains the program that produced Frank Thomas, Mark Bellhorn and Tim Hudson, with Hudson returning to serve as the current pitching coach. Bo Jackson hit .401 for the team in 1985 with 17 home runs and returned to hit seven homers in 22 games in 1986 after the controversy involving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Auburn's stadium, Plainsman Park, is a cathedral for college baseball and is in its seventh decade as the home of the Tigers. The stadium itself is a combination of influences from Camden Yards, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, and the left field wall is a replica of sorts of the Green Monster. In 2016, D1Baseball.com named it one of the best venues in college baseball. In a "normal season" outside of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 3,000 fans can pack into its chairs with more able to line its sightlines on the terrace.
That's why this series win is one for the Birdball ages. BC baseball is New England-based, a stigmatizing statement at times in college baseball, and played its first home game in front of the Pete Frates Center last week. A former Big East program, Boston College only recently started charging at the ACC with its NCAA Tournament appearances in 2009 and 2016, and its near-miss in 2019 included a berth in the ACC semifinals.
Winning the series reverberated through college baseball, but doing it in the dramatic fashion was an exclamation point. This wasn't an ordinary win, and it wasn't an ordinary series. The two teams weren't even scheduled to play each other until the middle of the week. But borne of the opportunity, BC seized it and sent a message to the rest of the college baseball universe that the romantic underdog in baseball is very much alive, and it resides in Chestnut Hill.
Players Mentioned
OF
/ Baseball
1B/OF
/ Baseball
IF
/ Baseball
IF/OF
/ Baseball
OF
/ Baseball
IF/OF
/ Baseball
OF
/ Baseball
IF
/ Baseball
LHP
/ BaseballMen's Basketball: UMass Postgame Press Conference (Dec. 10, 2025)
Thursday, December 11
Women's Basketball: Bryant Postgame Press Conference (Dec. 9, 2025)
Wednesday, December 10
Rowing: Christmas Music
Tuesday, December 09
Rowing: Favorite Thanksgiving Food
Tuesday, December 09
