Freeman Walks It Off in the Tenth Inning with Second Homer

Sunday, May 8

Hanover, N.H.

12:00 PM

Dartmouth College

22-18

Manhattan

20-24

Manhattan

Dartmouth

Kolton Freeman celebrates like no other Big Green player can.

Photo by: Connor Cunningham

Freeman Walks It Off in the Tenth Inning with Second Homer

5/8/2022 3:12:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score Box Score (HTML)Box Score Highlights Freeman's walk-off homer

The junior tied the game in the eighth with a round-tripper, won it in the 10th with another

By: Rick Bender

HANOVER, N.H. — Kolton Freeman made sure this Mother's Day was one his mother will never forget.

Trailing 2-1 to start the eighth, the junior launched a home run over the left-field fence at Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park onto Park Street to tie the game. Two innings later, Freeman did it again with his team-leading eighth long ball of the season to lift Dartmouth (22-18) to a 3-2, walk-off victory over Manhattan (20-24), salvaging the third game of the non-conference series. It was Freeman's second multi-homer game of the season, though this one was quite a bit more dramatic.

Freeman finished the game with three of the Big Green's eight hits, adding a line single to left in the fourth. No other player in the game had more than one knock on the day.

"After the first home run, I felt good coming to the plate the next time," Freeman said after the game. "His fastball had a little sink to it, so I wanted to get something on the inner half to drive. At one point, he shook the catcher off four times, and I stepped out and looked at the catcher and said, 'He isn't shaking to a fifth pitch.' On the 3-1 pitch, I was looking for the fastball, got it and didn't miss it. As soon as it left my bat, I was so stoked. I can't describe it any other way, just so stoked."

The game belonged to the pitchers and the defenses for most of the afternoon with Jasper hurler Kyle Lesler tossing six scoreless innings while scattering five hits and a walk to go with three strikeouts. Big Green senior Justin Murray, meanwhile pitched into the seventh and surrendered two runs on a mere three hits and three walks, though he and junior reliever Jack Metzger did not strike out a single batter all day.

Murray needed just 19 pitches to get through the first two innings, but created a problem in the third when he issued a one-out walk to the ninth-place hitter, Trevor Santos. Matt Padre executed a hit-and-run to perfection, hitting a ball through the right side to put runners on the corners, and Harrison Treble got the run home on a grounder to second that Bryce Daniel made a terrific diving play on to help limit the damage.

In the fifth, Murray walked two more hitters and had runners on the corners with two out when the Jaspers tried to steal a run. But the Big Green defense sniffed out the strategy as catcher Nathan Cmeyla threw to shortstop Tyler Cox who quickly whirled and fired to third before the runner could recover for the third out.

The Dartmouth offense, meanwhile, was having trouble solving Lesler. The Big Green did put runners on first and second with two outs in each of the first two frames but could not get the big hit. Lesler retired 10 consecutive batters from the third through sixth innings before junior Connor Bertsch lined a two-out double, but Lesler induced a lazy fly ball — one of 14 air outs in his six innings — to keep the Green off the board.

Jack Lynch stroked a leadoff double off Murray to start the seventh, and after taking third on a grounder to short, scored when on a chopper that got through the infield for a 2-0 Manhattan lead.

Lesler did not return to the mound to start the seventh having thrown 94 pitches, and Dartmouth scratched out a run without a hit against lefty reliever Jack Mahoney. A one-out walk to sophomore Max Zajec and a wild pitch put a Big Green runner in scoring position with fewer than two outs for the first time all afternoon. Daniel reached base when the throw on his grounder to short sailed high and pulled the first baseman off the bag. Cox followed by hitting the next pitch deep enough to right to score Zajec easily, cutting the deficit in half at 2-1.

Any fan who took a bathroom break before the bottom of the eighth might have missed Freeman's first four-bagger as he launched the first pitch of the inning well over the netting above the fence in left, knotting the score at two.

Metzger, who entered after the second run scored in the seventh, retired the first nine batters he faced before Manhattan worked him for a one-out walk and a single through the left side in the 10th. His defense came through for him, however, as Daniel ranged to his left, deftly made the throw to second and Cox fired the relay to first for the inning-ending twin-killing to escape the jam.

Freeman led off the 10th, facing Mahoney again, and he worked the count to 3-1 before crushing an offering over everything for the walk-off winner, sending the California native into a celebratory frenzy as he rounded the bases, emphatically untucking his shirt and spiking his helmet between his legs before being showered by his teammates with bottles of water as he touched home plate.

Metzger (1-2), who leads the Ivy League with six saves, earned his first collegiate victory with 3.2 scoreless innings, matching his longest outing of his career. Mahoney (1-1) suffered his first loss of the year, allowing all three runs, two earned, on three hits and two walks with one punchout.

Dartmouth will finish the regular season next weekend when it hosts the Ivy League leader Columbia (26-13, 16-2 Ivy) for a three-game series on Saturday and Sunday. In order to qualify for the Ivy Championship Series in two weeks, the Big Green will need to sweep the Lions, which have won 19 straight contests, and have Princeton sweep a three-game series from second-place Penn. All three games against Columbia will be streamed live on ESPN+ with Wayne Young '72 and Brett Franklin calling the action. The doubleheader on Saturday will start at 11:30 a.m. while Sunday's finale will begin at noon.

Notes: Freeman is the seventh Dartmouth player since 2000 to hit a walk-off homer, the last one coming off the bat of Dustin Shirley on April 28, 2018, in a 2-1 win over Brown … the last Big Green hitter to hit two homers in a game with the second being a walk-off was Mike Levy on April 28, 2001 in a 6-5, 10-inning victory over Harvard … Dartmouth had not played an extra-inning game all season before the second game yesterday against the Jaspers, and now it has had two in a row … the last time the Big Green failed to strike out a single batter in a game was at Boston College on April 8, 2014, a 2-1 Dartmouth victory.