By Bill Alden

It was Asher Lee-Tyson’s final game at Clarke Field for the Princeton University baseball team, and he started things with a bang.

With Princeton hosting Yale last Sunday afternoon, senior shortstop Lee-Tyson slammed a run-scoring double to left field in the bottom of the first inning to give the Tigers a 1-0 lead.

Two innings later, Lee-Tyson drew a walk and scored on a two-run homer by Conor Nolan as Princeton went ahead 3-1.

The Tigers, though, never scored after that as defending Ivy League champion and current league leader Yale scored five unanswered runs to pull away to an 8-3 win.

“It was a good start for us,” said Lee-Tyson, a 5’11, 185-pound native of Weston, Conn. “I would have hoped that the game would have turned out better.”

Lee-Tyson and his teammates hoped the weekend would turn out better as they started the series against Yale still alive for a top-two finish and a spot in the Ivy League Championship Series but the Bulldogs effectively eliminated Princeton by sweeping the Tigers 2-1 and 6-0 in a doubleheader on Saturday.

“We thought if we could run the table, you don’t know what can happen but losing the first two of the series hurt,” said Lee-Tyson of the Tigers, who are now 10-23 overall and 7-11 Ivy and will wrap up the season by playing a single game at Monmouth on May 3 and a three-game set at Dartmouth from May 5-6.

“It is a bittersweet feeling, it came quicker than I thought it would. I would have liked to have gotten a win today.”

It was a bitter week overall for the Tigers as they were swept by Harvard in a three-game series on April 24 and 25.

“There are no excuses, we just didn’t play good baseball against Yale or Harvard,” said Lee-Tyson.

“I don’t think it was one or two little things, it was everything. We didn’t play good defense, we didn’t pitch that well, we didn’t hit that well.”

Although Lee-Tyson has played well in his final campaign, hitting .291, the second best on the team behind the .315 mark of junior outfielder Jesper Horsted, the individual accomplishments are outweighed by Princeton’s losing mark in Ivy competition.

“I really wanted to come out of this senior season with the Ivy League championship,” said Lee-Tyson, who has 33 hits so far this spring and 118 in his career. “I think anything less than that was going to be disappointing, so this is tough.”

While it will be tough for Lee-Tyson to say goodbye to baseball after this week, he is leaving with fond memories of his Princeton experience.

“It is just a really good group of guys,” said Lee-Tyson, who is headed to Dallas after graduation to work in a consulting job. “I am going to miss baseball a lot but even more than that, I will miss these guys.”