Jumbos Thunder Past Crimson Batmen

As if things aren't bad enough already, Mother Nature insisted on getting her kicks in on the Crimson baseball team yesterday, cutting short the Harvard-Tufts game with some rain and leaving the hard-luck homestanders with a 4-1 seven-inning loss to the visiting Jumbos.

These are lean times for the Harvard varsity's victory column, and yesterday's defeat marked the eighth time in the last eleven games that things haven't worked out the way coach Loyal Park would like them to.

The biggest qualification to the Crimson's tale of woe this season is the performance of freshman pitcher Larry Brown, the victim of the Jumbo uprising and recipient of his first loss of the year (he's now 3-1) in the game. But Brown was hardly tagged very hard, as revealed by the statistics for the big Tufts rally in the fourth inning: four runs on one hit.

Harvard took its only lead of the game in the second, when captain Barry Cronin's single brought home Mike Lynch for a 1-0 lead. Crimson rightfielder Tommy Joyce was thrown out at home on the same play, despite a mild attempt on his part to decapitate the Jumbo catcher Don Leach.

Brown cruised into the fourth with a no-hitter and the 1-0 bulge, but then things seemed to get out of hand. The account of the inning won't surprise too many Crimson followers: 3 walks, one error, one hit, and Harvard trailed by three runs.

Jumbo Mark Fisher got the hit, a single, after two walks, knotting the score at 1-1. The third walk loaded the bases, and a groundball hit by Rich Elliot somehow eluded the poised glove of Crimson shortstop Paul Halas. With the score 3-1, John Connors lofted a sacrifice fly to centerfielder Leon Goetz, and Randy Rundl paced home with the final Elephant run.

Tufts pitcher Jeff Berkman limited the Crimson bats to just two hits, impressive considering Harvard's .293 team batting average. His wildness got him into trouble in the second and the third (when he walked three consecutive Harvard batters), but the Jumbo defense turned in clutch double plays to squash both Crimson rallies.