All season long, head coach Brett Boretti called his baseball team a family, with its mix of youth and experience. In the deciding game of the Ivy League championship playoff, Boretti stuck by his convictions. He started freshman Geoff Whitaker, who led the team in wins, and relieved him with senior Henry Perkins, who had not started a single Ivy game but was the team's leading hitter and second baseman. This combination brought the Columbia baseball program its first outright Ivy championship in more than 30 years.

"It's a credit to the team and the players and the amount of work and effort they put in," Boretti said. "To be able to stay focused on the championship goal all year long and approach it with focus and intensity is amazing."

Integrating several fresh starters, the team lost its first eight games on its season-opening road trip and won just four of 18 games before beginning Ivy play.
The Lions allowed more than 20 runs on two occasions and more than 10 six times. Senior pitcher John Baumann had just finished playing basketball and his fellow senior ace, Bill Purdy, gave up 10 runs in his last nonconference start.

The Light Blue's first Ivy test came against Brown, the defending champions. The Lions outscored the Bears 17-5 as Whitaker and Joe Scarlata, with one career Ivy start between them entering the weekend, pitched 14 1/3 of the 16 innings. After splitting with Yale the next day, March 30, the Lions traveled to Harvard and Dartmouth the next weekend.

After Whitaker and Scarlata dominated the Crimson, allowing just two runs in two games, the Light Blue faced Dartmouth. The Big Green had made an early impression on the league by going 6-0 against the Gehrig Division heading into its final doubleheader.

Baumann, in his first Ivy start of the year, gave up one run and pitched a complete game to earn Columbia a split and a 6-2 record heading into Gehrig Division play.
The Lions were two games up on Princeton, their next opponent.

After dropping the first two games against the Tigers, Columbia rebounded by sweeping the second doubleheader to retake the division lead.

With a two-game lead and eight games to play, the Lions stormed through the rest of their schedule, taking seven of eight from Cornell and Penn. The Light Blue clinched the title April 26 in the first game against Penn when Mike Roberts singled home the winning run in the bottom of the fifth inning.

While Columbia got solid performances from its starters throughout the Ivy season, its offense and defense picked up as the season went on.

"Defensively, Al [Alex Ferrera] at short and Nick [Nick Cox] in center can run and cover some ground," Boretti said. "The middle of the field is where you are trying to hit the ball and having two quick guys out there helps out the pitching."

Cox was a force for the Light Blue offense from its opening game, hitting .365 on the year and leading the Ivy League with 26 stolen bases. Three other Lions stole at least 10 bases—Perkins, Jason Banos, and Noah Cooper, winner of the Blair Bat.
In the Ivy playoff, Columbia faced Dartmouth, a team with the same record as the Lions and with whom the Light Blue had split its season series. The Big Green earned the tiebreaker and home field by virtue of its record against the league's third-best team, Princeton.

The games, which were supposed to take place May 3 and 4, were pushed back after Dartmouth failed to cover the field on a rainy Friday night.

With the games rescheduled for May 6 and 7, Boretti stuck with the same rotation he had all year and put Scarlata in the first game. With the Lions leading 8-3 after the top of the fifth, it was clear to Boretti that he had his best chance to take the series momentum with a win in the first game. With Baumann slotted for the second game, Boretti opted to bring in Purdy as a reliever.

"I thought we wanted to get that Game One win," Boretti said. "By doing that you end up saving the bullpen by just using two guys and try to keep pressure on them because we won that first game."

Purdy gave up three runs in four innings as the Lions won the first game 11-7.
After Dartmouth's ace, Russell Young, was battered for 20 hits, Baumann took his turn in game two, surrendering 10 runs in 4 2/3 innings. By the end of the fifth, the Big Green held a 14-3 lead.

"John by his own admission says he didn't have is best stuff but he still gave us four-plus innings," Boretti said. "It was that we needed. He's never one to make any excuses at all so I am going to make some for him."

The Lions countered with five runs in the bottom of the inning and four in the sixth to pull within two. Heading into the top of the ninth, they had come all the way back to tie the game before Dartmouth scored on a ground ball to take a 16-15 win.
"We're telling our guys they can't get us out," Boretti said. "You go into next game thinking that way."

Thanks to Whitaker, Columbia did not need to worry about that. He shut down the Big Green, which had not been held scoreless in consecutive innings in either of the first two games, for four innings until exploding for five runs in the bottom of the fifth.
With the Lions down two in the sixth and with one home run already under his belt, Ferrera stepped to the plate with two runners on and sent freshman Ryan Smith's pitch into the seats to give the Lions a 6-5 lead.

"Offensively he's a battler," Boretti said. "He did a good job of working counts, got the pitcher in a situation where he's throwing me a fastball. Al can handle that fastball pretty good."

The Big Green threatened again in the sixth but with runners on second and third, and Boretti brought in Perkins, who had posted the team's lowest ERA despite pitching in midweek games. Perkins got out of the inning and shut out Dartmouth the rest of the game en route to a 7-5 win.

"Yesterday's performance is the definition of Henry Perkins," Boretti said. "He's the guy we want to give the ball to in those situations."

With the championship over, the baseball team now has three weeks to prepare for its NCAA regional games, which begin May 30.