Nobody expected what came from freshman Caleb Fields on Saturday, not even Fields himself.
With two runners on base, two down and the Northwestern baseball team trailing Indiana 10-9, Fields stepped up to the plate in the final inning.
“I was just trying to get the ball in play and trying to keep us alive,” Fields said.
On his first pitch, Fields slammed the ball to right field. He thought it was an out, but as the ball carried and just kept flying, excitement grew. And then it landed — on the other side of the fence.
The underclassman went 3-for-4 and hit the three-run walk-off homer to give the Wildcats (11-11-1, 2-2 Big Ten) a 12-10 win over the Hoosiers (18-9, 2-2).
The dramatic home run helped NU salvage a split in a four-game weekend series with Indiana. The Cats won on Friday and in Saturday’s second game but lost the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader and on Sunday.
“This is my dark-alley group of guys,” coach Paul Stevens said after Fields’ home run. “I will walk down a dark alley (with them) because I believe these guys will never die. Somebody can have them down on the ground with a foot on their throat, and they’re going to find a way to come back off the turf.”
The Cats began the weekend in fine fashion Friday, with junior J.A. Happ picking up his most impressive win of the season, and probably of his career.
Happ threw his first collegiate nine-inning shutout, allowing just two hits and striking out 12 batters in the 2-0 win.
“He looked like he had ice water in his veins,” Stevens said. “We talked about, yesterday, just finding a way to be there in the ninth inning when we needed him to shut them down. I can’t say enough about the job he did today.”
Unfortunately for the Cats, Dan Brauer couldn’t duplicate Happ’s near-perfection. In the first game of a doubleheader Saturday, Brauer gave up three earned runs in 5.1 innings pitched.
Despite senior Josh Lieberman’s 3-for-4 performance at the plate, a single in the top of the sixth by Indiana’s Ryan Donley knocked in Kevin Mahar and gave the Hoosiers a 4-3 edge on Saturday.
On Sunday, both teams had six hits, and Indiana left eight runners on base while NU stranded six.
NU freshman George Kontos pitched inconsistently and gave up three earned runs in seven innings. He also gave up six walks, and two of Indiana’s runners came home on wild pitches in the 3-1 loss.
“I thought Kontos did what a lot of young pitchers do,” Stevens said. “He had glimpses of a guy who’s going to be an awfully good pitcher. I’m not going to be upset, because there’s some big potential in that young man.”
While both games on Saturday saw an NU player go 3-for-4, none of the Cats had three hits on Sunday.
Coach Stevens said he was excited by some of the positives he saw in the Cats’ first weekend at home, including Fields’ heart-stopping home run.
“I would have loved to have been 3-1 or 4-0, but the fact of the matter is I understand that it’s a long haul, and we didn’t do some of the things that I think we probably needed to do on the mound,” Stevens said. “But those things will be there. So I’m encouraged about everything I saw.”
