On April 13 and 14, the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) and Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) baseball teams met for their annual Sixth Street Rivalry game, split between P-P’s Alumni Field and Azusa Pacific’s Cougar Baseball Complex. With both teams closely ranked coming into the game — at 15th and 17th in the nation, respectively — the series was wrought with anticipation.
CMS got off to a hot start, scoring multiple runs in each of the first three innings of game one, eventually sweeping the series.
“I’ve never seen that group of guys so hype and just ready for it, with so much energy,” LF Bryce Didrickson HM ’26 said. “I know how much this weekend means to all of our guys. Just the fact that it’s the Sixth Street Rivalry brought everyone’s morale up; [we were] super pumped to get it going.”
CMS batters credited their pitchers for their preparation throughout the week. Throughout the week, the Stags utilized RHP Parker McGraw’s CM ’27 sidearm release and pitch mix, which resembles Sagehen starter Max Brungrabber’s PZ ’27, to help batters to prepare for what they would see during the series. On top of prepared batters, the Stags’ pitching staff also showed out, holding a Sagehens team averaging 11.2 runs per game to just 12 runs over all three games.
“You can tell as fielders, playing behind your pitcher, when your guy has confidence in himself and confidence in the fact that he’s better than the batter in the box. More than any series, this weekend, I saw that in our pitchers,” 2B Carter Bennett CM ’28 said.
As Friday’s game continued, CMS’s lead grew, culminating in a 17-4 mercy rule win after seven innings. Despite the large margin of victory, the Stags knew they couldn’t let up in the next games. They only had to look back to last season, when a Stags 15-4 Friday win was followed by back-to-back Sagehen victories that Saturday.
“We all knew that game one was the same [as last year] and that we needed to keep that going through the weekend,” 3B Rider Gordon CM ’27 said. “Last year, we thought that we were just going to do the same thing [as game one] and not need the same focus, the same energy. This weekend, we made sure to keep the same focus and the same energy.”
The Sagehens attempted to bounce back on Saturday. Despite losing both games, the Sagehens kept the game competitive, and P-P secured their first lead of the series in the first inning of game three, courtesy of a 3B Cooper Berry PZ ’27 home run. Despite the loss, Berry noted the unique aspects of the Sixth Street tradition, even calling it ESPN-worthy.
“It’s the best rivalry in sports,” Berry said. “It’s so cool how you go to school with these guys. I’m taking classes with guys on their team. We see them dining all the time — we know them. It makes it a whole other level of rivalry. There’s nothing like it in college sports.”
For CMS, Sixth Street means more than beating a SCIAC rival. It offers their classmates the opportunity to attend games. Since the Stags’ field is under construction, their home games — like the two Saturday Sixth Street games — have taken place at Azusa Pacific University.
“The most exciting portion of the Sixth Street Rivalry is that we get to play a game on Claremont campus,” Henderson said. “We don’t have a field [at the moment], so this is sort of the one game a year that we get to have home fans and friends that you see around school.”
Accordingly, Stags fans poured into Alumni Field, filling much of the limited seating and overflowing onto the surrounding Pomona sidewalk. Buoyed by their ‘home’ fans’ attendance, everything went right for the Stags.
“That’s the thing about playing good teams, that you can hit really well, or you can pitch really well, but in order to beat a good team, you have to have everything click,” Didrickson said. “I’d say that’s what happened for us this week. Our offense and our defense came together, and we timed everything up perfectly.”
While the weekend proved disappointing for the Sagehens, Berry looks forward to a rematch. Given how the SCIAC typically shakes out — as both CMS and P-P remain near the top of the rankings — he said there is a good chance the two rivals will meet again in the playoffs for the third consecutive year.
“We know that we’re going to see those guys again down the road, and we’re ready,” Berry said. “We want another shot at them.”
Before their rematch, both teams hope to take care of business against the final three opponents on their respective schedules.
This weekend, the Stags will travel north to take on George Fox in Oregon, while the Sagehens play a home-and-away series versus Caltech. Everyone will be keeping a close watch on the SCIAC standings, where the top five teams are tied at six league losses.