Penn Nine Beats Crimson Varsity In Tight 4-2 Win

Jerry Weed proved too much for the varsity baseball team yesterday, allowing only three hits and two runs as the Pennsylvania nine triumphed, 4 to 2, in a game called after seven innings because of darkness. This was the Crimson's third loss in a row and second defeat in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League. Yesterday's failure blackened the varsity's hopes for winning the E.I.B.L. title, and may lead to a disappointing season for a team which showed much promise during its spring trip.

The game was close until the last inning, when Pennsylvania put over the two deciding runs, and had the Crimson been able to hit, it could easily have taken the lead and won. The Quakers even went to the trouble of giving the varsity four baserunners as a result of four errors, but the Crimson batters were unable to bring them home.

On Thursday, coach Norm Shepard had remarked significantly that though the team had been hitting extremely well during the year, it still "lacked hits at the crucial times when men were on base." Shepard's philosophy on winning is somehow to get a runner on first base and then sacrifice him to second, where he can come home on a single.

Yesterday the first steps of this plan were consistently carried out, but the single which would score a runner never came.

The main reason behind this paucity of hits was a brilliant effort by Quaker pitcher Weed. the day before the game, Shepard mentioned that if coach Jack McCloskey started Weed, Pennsylvania would have a slight edge. This prediction unfortunately proved quite true. Equipped with an excellent curve, which was his main pitch, Weed had the Crimson batters constantly off balance, and the Quakers had little trouble with the resultant pop flies and grounders.

Occasionally the curve would hang, and it was then that Moe Balboni and Mouse Kasarjian belted the home runs which accounted for the two Crimson scores. Balboni's round tripper came in the bottom of the seventh, and was a prodigious smash which carried over 350 feet down the left field line