If the Mets need any last-second pointers for Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, they should place a call to Morningside Heights and the Columbia baseball program.
The Cubs’ starting pitcher, Kyle Hendricks, was hammered by the Lions in 2010 as a sophomore, charged with 12 earned runs and 12 hits over four forgettable innings in the opener of the Ivy League Championship Series, a 13-2 Columbia victory.
The Mets will send ace Jacob deGrom to the mound, a more formidable opponent — with all due respect — than Hendricks faced that spring day in Columbia’s Pat Lowery.
Dartmouth would advance to the NCAA Tournament in 2010, winning the next two games of the series, despite Hendricks getting embarrassed for four home runs and seven extra-base hits in the opener. Columbia jumped Hendricks for five first-inning runs and two home runs, by Dario Pizzano and Alex Ferrera.
Hendricks pitched three years for Dartmouth — he was a first-team All-Ivy League selection as a junior and did beat Columbia as a freshman — before he was selected in the eighth round of the MLB First-Year Player Draft in 2011 by the Detroit Tigers.
The Mets’ lack of Ivy League players was never so glaring.