McGaw Hall has served as home for Northwestern’s basketball teams for decades. On Saturday, it found a new purpose: home run landing pad.
Nicole Pauly and Erin Dyer launched tape-measure home runs in separate halves of a doubleheader against Indiana that cleared the left field fence, a few rows of bleachers and the arena’s wall, before finally landing on the stadium roof. Pauly and Dyer became the second and third batters ever to hit the roof, the other being Jessica Miller in 2007.
“It’s quite a feeling when you get to hit the ball up on the roof,” Dyer said. “It doesn’t happen very often.”
Although the blasts only counted as much as any standard home run, they were more important in terms of momentum. Each shot came with the score tied at zero in games NU went on to win. Two batters after surrendering Dyer’s homer Indiana pitcher Ashley Hobbs was relieved of her pitching duties for the day.
NU’s celebrations greeting Pauly and Dyer at home plate were more raucous than usual.
“It was pretty exciting,” Dyer said. “You could probably tell from our party at the plate.”
When Pauly stepped into the box, Indiana’s Sara Olson had been pitching brilliantly. The Hoosier with a herky-jerky windup had been keeping the ball low and coaxing NU into groundouts, holding the Wildcats scoreless with one hit through three and one-third innings, but that all changed on a 2-2 inside pitch to Pauly.
“I knew it was over,” Pauly said. “But I didn’t know it was that far over.”
The solo shot was a line drive a few feet to the right of the left field foul pole and hit McGaw Hall’s slanted roof about a quarter of the way up. But Pauly didn’t see it.
“I was too busy giving Caryl (Drohan) a high five at first,” Pauly said. “I didn’t know until my teammates were patting me on the head.”
Although NU surrendered the lead in the top of the sixth, the team answered with two runs in the bottom half to earn a 3-1 victory.
Hobbs started the second game off strong. But after a single by sophomore Michelle Batts to lead off the second, followed by a hit by-pitch, Hobbs threw something Dyer liked.
“I’m pretty sure it was a missed pitch,” Dyer said. “It was pretty much right out over the middle of the plate.”
Dyer’s shot was closer to center field and landed higher up on the roof than Pauly’s, but was more of a fly ball.
“I don’t really know what happened,” Dyer said. “It got up there somehow.”
After giving up a hit to Kelly Quinn two batters later, Hobbs was replaced by Olson, who went on to give up four more runs.
It is 200 feet to the fence in left field, and then at least 15 feet back to the wall of McGaw Hall. Both balls landed even further back up on the roof.
With the homers, Pauly and Dyer are tied in both season and career home run totals, each with nine on the year and 38 since arriving at NU.
All this goes to show that not all home runs are created equal.
“Our team really loves home runs,” coach Kate Drohan said. “But they really, really love getting it on the roof.”
