When Seton Hall University's baseball team scored four runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie Rutgers en route to a 7-6 win in 10 innings on Tuesday, my college friend Dave and I were ecstatic. We cheered and high-fived each other like some of the undergraduates in the stands. After all, it wasn't just another team our Pirates were playing that day. It was Rutgers, our intra-state rival. Yeah, the Rutgers we always get extra pleasure in beating.
A win against Rutgers, in any sport, on any day, has been extra special to me since I was a student at Seton Hall in 1976. That was the year Rutgers' mens basketball team finished its schedule undefeated, posting an NBA-like 119-93 win over the Pirates early in the season. Seton Hall finished a very respectable 18-9 thanks to some outstanding play by Glenn Mosely, Greg Tynes and Tom Flaherty. But no, the headlines and talk were all about the great Rutgers team featuring Phil Sellers, Mike Dabney, Ed Jordan, Hollis Copeland, James Bailey and, off the bench, Abdel Anderson. Yeah, you could say I took some pleasure in seeing the Scarlet Knights getting beat (twice) in the Final Four round of the NCAA tournament at the end of March.
It was payback for the Pirates 13 years later, when Seton Hall trounced Rutgers at the Meadowlands, 96-70, en route to the NCAA championship game. That Seton Hall team, featuring John Morton, Andrew Gaze, Ramon Ramos, Daryll Walker and Gerald Greene, beat Indiana, UNLV and Duke in the NCAA tournament before being edged by Michigan in overtime of the final. To some Seton Hall fans, however, the early-season win against a Rutgers team that would finish 18-13 was among the sweetest.
The Seton Hall-Rutgers basketball rivalry dates back 100 years. I'm happy to say the Pirates have more often gotten the better of the Scarlet Knights during that time, winning 38 of the 67 games they've played. Some of Seton Hall's wins against Rutgers occurred during seasons when the Pirates had mediocre teams. But, as long as the year included a win against the Scarlet Knights, it was not a lost season.
Many of the Seton Hall-Rutgers basketball games have been nail biters -- 20 of the last 24 matchups were decided by six points or less or went into overtime -- but not since the rivalry began contesting the Garden State Hardwood Classic two seasons again. The Pirates trounced the Scarlet Knights, 81-54, in Newark two winters ago, and humiliated Rutgers in Piscataway, 84-55, last December. Yeah, I like that!
The two New Jersey universities have also played 110 baseball games against each other during the last 70 years. Seton Hall holds a 56-53 (with one tie) advantage in the series. Few of the wins, however, could have been as sweet as Tuesday's. Down to its last out of the game with a runner on first base, Seton Hall batters drew three consecutive walks and then came through with a pair of hits to tie it. In the bottom of the 10th, the Pirates again drew three walks and then used an infield hit to bring in the winning run.
Seton Hall nearly did it again today at Rutgers, scoring with the bases loaded in the top of the ninth to pull within a run, but it was not to be as the Scarlet Knights held on to a 3-2 win. So, the Pirates tossed them a bone. Yeah, we'll remember the next time we beat them on the basketball court, baseball field or any other competition.
