Box Score 1 | Box Score 2
FLEMINGTON, N.J. - As the glaciers that cover baseball fields all over New York continue their agonizingly slow demise this spring, the baseball gods finally smiled on the Bard College baseball team on Tuesday.

The sun came out.

Sure, the Raptors traveled two-and-a-half hours to play a 'home' doubleheader against a team which traveled 90 minutes. But once the ping of the aluminum bats were heard and chatter started emanating from the dugouts, nobody seemed to care where the games were played. They could have been in Iowa. They were finally playing baseball and it was a wonderful thing.

The Raptors opened 2014 with a doubleheader split, losing to Lehman College, 6-3, in the opener, then rallying to win the nightcap, 4-3.

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Bard's youthful squad - 11 freshmen on a roster of 15 - kicked the ball around a little bit, and it was too bad, because the pitchers only gave up three earned runs all day. Still, earning the split in a tight second game certainly made the winter doldrums disappear, regardless of the fact that it's supposed to be back to 27 degrees outside on Thursday.

Lehman (1-3) jumped out to a 5-0 lead in Game 1, four of them unearned. The Raptors rallied in the bottom of the fifth, cutting the lead to 5-3 on an RBI single by Dylan Long, and a two-run double by Adam Carafotes. Bard couldn't get anything going in the sixth and seventh and went down, 6-3.

Zach Ward took the loss, yielding eight hits and four walks over 3 2/3 innings - but just one earned run.

Game 2 started similarly, with Lehman scoring a pair of unearned runs in the first. JP Fisher doubled and scored an unearned run in the bottom of the first to cut the lead to 2-1, and the Lightning went ahead, 3-1, when Michael Liang (Bronx, NY) homered to left off of Fisher in the top of the third.

Fisher struck the big blow in the bottom of the fourth, driving in two with a triple to right center to tie the game, 3-3. A few batters later, Tom Danz drew a bases-loaded walk for what proved to be the winning run.

Fisher got the win, giving up five hits and one earned run with no walks. Long got an old-school save, fending off Lehman with three innings of two-hit relief with no walks and three strikeouts.

Long went 4-for-6 with two walks on the day; Fisher went 3-for-8 with a double, triple, two RBI and three runs scored.

Bard's ever-changing schedule looks like this at the moment: The Raptors will 'host' D'Youville College for a non-league doubleheader on Saturday at 1 - in Farmingdale, N.Y. Keep an eye on the web site and Bard's Facebook and Twitter pages to keep up with updates.

PS: Next spring, Bard will be playing home games on the turf of Honey Field, the brand new facility currently under construction on campus. Home games in New Jersey or Long Island will then become folklore around here.