BOSTON, Mass – Jack Beverly slugged his way through the Massachusetts baseball team’s loss against Boston College in the Beanpot consolation game at Fenway Park. The Framingham, Mass. native went 3-for-5 with three doubles in the Minutemen’s (12-26-1, 6-15 Atlantic 10) 13-6 loss to the Eagles (22-23, 9-15 Atlantic Coast Conference).
UMass trailed 4-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning, needing an offensive jolt midway through the game. Multiple Minutemen delivered as Carter Hanson drove in the third run of the inning with a sacrifice groundout. Beverly dug in with two outs and Braden Sullivan as the lone runner on second base.
With no room for error, the senior barreled a ball at the stoic Green Monster, striking the middle of the wall hard before falling to the warning track. This brought Sullivan around to score, tying the game at four runs apiece.
“I was trying to get the head out a bit, working with the Green Monster out in left field there,” Beverly said. “[I was] just trying to get my pitch and barrel it.”
This wasn’t the last of the third baseman’s offensive heroics. With the score still knotted in the bottom of the seventh, Sullivan and Anthony Tirado were in scoring position after Hanson bunted them over.
Again with two outs, Beverly launched a ball into deep left-center field, cutting high through the Fenway sky and off the Monster for his third double of the day. This moonshot deflected off the wall near where the Monster and the centerfield wall meet, missing a home run by mere feet.
With this hit, Beverly knocked in another pair of runs, giving UMass a 6-4 lead. This is where the Minutemen offense concluded their scoring, with Beverly accounting for half of the team’s RBIs with three.
This power outburst for the third baseman came after a difficult defensive lapse three innings prior. After a series of wild pitches from Ben Thomason put two runners in scoring position for Boston College, Colin Poche rolled a ground ball over to third. With the inning-ending putout in his hands, Beverly spiked the throw. As the ball skipped over the camera well on the first base line and out of play, a pair of runners crossed home to give the Eagles a 3-0 lead.
“Obviously, [he] made a little miscue early in the game,” head coach Matt Reynolds said. “For him to just respond to that after that adversity and hit a couple balls off the monster, it was great.”
In response to his initial shortcomings, the senior notched the fourth three-hit game of his career and set a career-high with three doubles in this game. The latter two labeled Fenway’s iconic left-field wall, but the first was split into the right-center gap.
Leading off the second inning, Beverly fired a ball deep toward the home bullpen, falling for a two-bagger despite a diving attempt from Boston College’s centerfielder Josiah Ragsdale. Even though this extra-base hit that started the inning didn’t directly lead to any runs, it was a jumpstart for the Minutemen offense that fully caught on two innings later where the third baseman continued the momentum with a pair of RBI knocks.
After seeing the lead slip away in the late innings against the Eagles, UMass will take on its second mid-week matchup on April 30 at 3 p.m. against Sienna. That game will be available to watch on ESPN+.
Tym Brown can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @tym_brown1.
