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WEST HAVEN — For better or worse, we live in a baseball world of metrics. Pitches and innings are charted and monitored as if some Einsteinian formula exists that can predict and prevent the effect of pitches on the muscles and tendons used to deliver them.
Every so often there is a pitcher, like Yale’s Jack Ohman, who senses when the moment arrives and wants the ball. The championship hanging in the balance, the responsibility to teammates, eclipse all other considerations.
“These guys put me on their back each and every day,” Ohman said. “I struggled this year. I was waiting for that opportunity to help them out. I’m just really glad my coach trusted me to put the ball in my hand.”
The situation on Sunday was this: Yale was trying to hang on to beat Brown and win the Ivy League tournament and take the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA’s Field of 64. So the whole Yale season was about this moment, as dusk was settling over Bush Field, tipping the pendulum to the guy on the mound.
NCAA bound: Yale tops Brown, 7-5, to take Ivy League baseball title, automatic bid in Field of 64
Bases loaded, no outs. In the old days, there would be no question about calling on the best arm for this occasion, but this is 2026 and Ohman, the son of ex-major leaguer Will Ohman, has a multi-million dollar right arm. He figures to be a high draft pick one day, and Ohman threw five innings, 100 pitches to beat Columbia roughly 48 hours before coming in on Sunday. Many pitchers in many places, guided by their camps, would not have risked their future to win a conference championship.
Jack Ohman, apparently, is made of much different stuff.
“Jack’s an animal,” Yale captain Davis Hanson said. “I was talking to our freshman second baseman, Jackson Hays, and we heard, he was throwing hard in the pen. Then he came in and he was throwing smooth 97 (MPH) and we just nodded to each other, ‘okay, we’re going to win.'”
After starting hitters with his gyro slider, or sweeper, Ohman dialed up 97 and 98 MPH to strike out Cam Legrassa and Matt Luigs to escape the eighth-inning mess and keep the Bulldogs in front. Then, getting a third strikeout, he closed out the 7-5 victory.
“Jack wanted the ball,” Yale coach Brian Hamm said. “When the moment came, it was hard to see (as the sun was setting), you want high velocity, overwhelm their bats, I think their legs were getting tired from the back end of the doubleheader.”
For this season’s motivational ploy, Hamm hit up Amazon and bought the tackiest royal blue, faux fur coat you’ve ever seen, an eye-bleeder right out of a 1970s B-movie. The idea is to illustrate that Yale would define what’s “cool” and what isn’t. So whoever shows cool under fire gets to wear the coat. Ohman, MVP of the tournament, was well qualified, but the players let Hamm, who had the guys to bring Ohman in, don it during the postgame celebration.
“Jack’s the type of kid who wants to win and win championships,” Hamm said. “And when you’re that type of person, you don’t get caught up in things that, at the end of the day, don’t matter. We have an outstanding coaching staff that keep our guys healthy, keeps their eye on their arm slot and mechanics and their work rate. Jack wanted the ball and he wanted to win and at the end of the day he cares deeply about his teammates.”
It was not a must-win for Yale (30-13-1), per se. If Brown prevailed, there would have been a winner-take-all finale on Monday. But Hamm was all in. He took out starter Daniel Cohen in the second inning, as Brown, which beat Columbia earlier in the day to stay alive, jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Teo Spadaccini was brilliantly efficient for 5 2/3 innings, and while he worked his teammates executed three bunts, one a squeeze in which Hanson, the slugging first baseman, got the bunt down on a pitch up near his chin; a sacrifice and another that prompted an error. They sprayed line drives, hit three sacrifice flies and took a 7-3 lead. This is Yale’s brand of baseball, and it’s cool to them.
After retiring 17 of 18 batters, Spadaccini allowed the first two to reach in the eighth, and reliever Ben Winslow walked a batter, and hit another to force in a run. Aware he could be in big trouble if there was a game Monday with Spadaccini spent, Hamm shot the works. He called in Ohman, the Ivy pitcher of the year in 2025, to make his first-ever relief appearance for the Bulldogs. Tate Evans, Ivy pitcher of the year in ’26, was willing to come in right behind him, a day after throwing six innings to beat Brown on Saturday.
Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: Meet the ‘pod-father’ of CT sports; a teen author and more
Ohman allowed a sac fly and walked a batter before getting out of trouble. “Adrenaline’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “Nothing’s really going through you’re mind, you’re just happy you came through in the big moment. I felt it was long overdue.”
A righthander, Ohman made waves as a freshman, going 8-1 with a 1.34 ERA, but he and Yale came up short in the conference tournament. Earning the regular season title and the chance to host again, Ohman, 5-2 with a 5.40 ERA, was anxious to pick his teammates up.
“If you asked Jack, if he would rather have an Ivy League championship and the chance to pitch in an (NCAA) Regional or have the season he had last year, he would pick this year over that every single time,” Hamm said.
Dom Amore: Yale can electrify its lovely, old ballpark with old-style baseball in Ivy tournament
Ohman confirmed. “You can’t replace this,” he said. “A hundred times out of a hundred times, nothing beats this feeling.”
Yale had never won an Ivy League tournament, the format established in 2023. The Bulldogs last reached the NCAA Tournament, as regular season conference champ, in 2017. Hamm, who won the Division III national championship at Eastern before coming to Yale in 2022, knows how to manage a postseason, double-elimination tournament. You don’t save your best arms for a tomorrow that may never come.
So when the moment came, Jack Ohman, innings, rest and pitch counts be damned, wanted the ball, Hamm gave it to him and a championship can be chalked up to grit and heart. Now he has two weeks to rest before the Regional.
“Unbelievable thing,” Spadaccini said. “It was just incredible to watch. He really put this team on his back in the last moment. It was awesome.”
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Every so often there is a pitcher, like Yale’s Jack Ohman, who senses when the moment arrives and wants the ball. The championship hanging in the balance, the responsibility to teammates, eclipse all other considerations.
“These guys put me on their back each and every day,” Ohman said. “I struggled this year. I was waiting for that opportunity to help them out. I’m just really glad my coach trusted me to put the ball in my hand.”
The situation on Sunday was this: Yale was trying to hang on to beat Brown and win the Ivy League tournament and take the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA’s Field of 64. So the whole Yale season was about this moment, as dusk was settling over Bush Field, tipping the pendulum to the guy on the mound.
NCAA bound: Yale tops Brown, 7-5, to take Ivy League baseball title, automatic bid in Field of 64
Bases loaded, no outs. In the old days, there would be no question about calling on the best arm for this occasion, but this is 2026 and Ohman, the son of ex-major leaguer Will Ohman, has a multi-million dollar right arm. He figures to be a high draft pick one day, and Ohman threw five innings, 100 pitches to beat Columbia roughly 48 hours before coming in on Sunday. Many pitchers in many places, guided by their camps, would not have risked their future to win a conference championship.
Jack Ohman, apparently, is made of much different stuff.
“Jack’s an animal,” Yale captain Davis Hanson said. “I was talking to our freshman second baseman, Jackson Hays, and we heard, he was throwing hard in the pen. Then he came in and he was throwing smooth 97 (MPH) and we just nodded to each other, ‘okay, we’re going to win.'”
After starting hitters with his gyro slider, or sweeper, Ohman dialed up 97 and 98 MPH to strike out Cam Legrassa and Matt Luigs to escape the eighth-inning mess and keep the Bulldogs in front. Then, getting a third strikeout, he closed out the 7-5 victory.
“Jack wanted the ball,” Yale coach Brian Hamm said. “When the moment came, it was hard to see (as the sun was setting), you want high velocity, overwhelm their bats, I think their legs were getting tired from the back end of the doubleheader.”
For this season’s motivational ploy, Hamm hit up Amazon and bought the tackiest royal blue, faux fur coat you’ve ever seen, an eye-bleeder right out of a 1970s B-movie. The idea is to illustrate that Yale would define what’s “cool” and what isn’t. So whoever shows cool under fire gets to wear the coat. Ohman, MVP of the tournament, was well qualified, but the players let Hamm, who had the guys to bring Ohman in, don it during the postgame celebration.
“Jack’s the type of kid who wants to win and win championships,” Hamm said. “And when you’re that type of person, you don’t get caught up in things that, at the end of the day, don’t matter. We have an outstanding coaching staff that keep our guys healthy, keeps their eye on their arm slot and mechanics and their work rate. Jack wanted the ball and he wanted to win and at the end of the day he cares deeply about his teammates.”
It was not a must-win for Yale (30-13-1), per se. If Brown prevailed, there would have been a winner-take-all finale on Monday. But Hamm was all in. He took out starter Daniel Cohen in the second inning, as Brown, which beat Columbia earlier in the day to stay alive, jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Teo Spadaccini was brilliantly efficient for 5 2/3 innings, and while he worked his teammates executed three bunts, one a squeeze in which Hanson, the slugging first baseman, got the bunt down on a pitch up near his chin; a sacrifice and another that prompted an error. They sprayed line drives, hit three sacrifice flies and took a 7-3 lead. This is Yale’s brand of baseball, and it’s cool to them.
After retiring 17 of 18 batters, Spadaccini allowed the first two to reach in the eighth, and reliever Ben Winslow walked a batter, and hit another to force in a run. Aware he could be in big trouble if there was a game Monday with Spadaccini spent, Hamm shot the works. He called in Ohman, the Ivy pitcher of the year in 2025, to make his first-ever relief appearance for the Bulldogs. Tate Evans, Ivy pitcher of the year in ’26, was willing to come in right behind him, a day after throwing six innings to beat Brown on Saturday.
Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: Meet the ‘pod-father’ of CT sports; a teen author and more
Ohman allowed a sac fly and walked a batter before getting out of trouble. “Adrenaline’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “Nothing’s really going through you’re mind, you’re just happy you came through in the big moment. I felt it was long overdue.”
A righthander, Ohman made waves as a freshman, going 8-1 with a 1.34 ERA, but he and Yale came up short in the conference tournament. Earning the regular season title and the chance to host again, Ohman, 5-2 with a 5.40 ERA, was anxious to pick his teammates up.
“If you asked Jack, if he would rather have an Ivy League championship and the chance to pitch in an (NCAA) Regional or have the season he had last year, he would pick this year over that every single time,” Hamm said.
Dom Amore: Yale can electrify its lovely, old ballpark with old-style baseball in Ivy tournament
Ohman confirmed. “You can’t replace this,” he said. “A hundred times out of a hundred times, nothing beats this feeling.”
Yale had never won an Ivy League tournament, the format established in 2023. The Bulldogs last reached the NCAA Tournament, as regular season conference champ, in 2017. Hamm, who won the Division III national championship at Eastern before coming to Yale in 2022, knows how to manage a postseason, double-elimination tournament. You don’t save your best arms for a tomorrow that may never come.
So when the moment came, Jack Ohman, innings, rest and pitch counts be damned, wanted the ball, Hamm gave it to him and a championship can be chalked up to grit and heart. Now he has two weeks to rest before the Regional.
“Unbelievable thing,” Spadaccini said. “It was just incredible to watch. He really put this team on his back in the last moment. It was awesome.”
Continue reading...
