Crimson Nine Derail Engineers, 5-1, As Brown Is on Track Against MIT

A steady performance by pitcher Larry Brown overcame a sluggish performance by the Harvard baseball team as the Crimson eased past MIT, 5-1, for its tenth straight win of the season.

Brown relinquished four hits to the Engineers, who could not solve his puzzling low fastball. After a shaky start, Brown removed the roundhouse curve from his repertoire, and forced harmless groundballs with his knee-high hummers which were gobbled by the all-freshman Crimson infield.

The Crimson bats (six hits) were not skyrocketing balls off MIT's Physics buildings either. However, Harvard capitalized on those safeties while taking advantage of numerous errors by MIT to plate three runs in the third and two more in the ninth.

Amazin'

The first inning had the Engineers reaching for their Bowmars as the Crimson packed the sacks with two walks and an MIT miscue. But MIT pitcher Ken Smith, whose lack of speed was exceeded only by his lack of control, somehow slipped third strikes past Paul Halas and Billy Blood to snuff the rally.

In the MIT half of the inning, Engineer Pete Steinhagen laced a triple and Joe Kracunas stood in the way of a Brown fastball to raise the home team's hopes. But Brown neatly ended the frame as he forced clean-up hitter Dan Sundberg to ground to freshman shortstop Burke St. John to start a 6-4-3 double play around Harvard's Kiddie Korps infield.

Wind-Blown

Dave Singleton opened Harvard's third with a walk and moved to third on Charlie Santos-Buch's wind-blown double which was conveniently misjudged by the MIT centerfielder. Mark Bingham munched on a Smith meatball and drove Singleton home with a single to left for Harvard's first run.

Santos-Buch was tagged out after Paul Halas' fielder's choice with Bingham moving to third. Halas stole second and Billy Blood walked to load the bases for St. John, St. John dribbled an infield single to plate Bingham, and Halas alertly dashed in from second for the third Crimson run.

Look Ma, No Hands!

The Crimson added two runs in the ninth to send the sidearm slinging Smith to the showers. Singleton scored for the Crimson while the Engineers booted the ball around the infield, and Santos-Buch sped home from third amidst a botched rundown play.

Meanwhile Brown was in complete control after surrendering a run in the fourth inning and set MIT down in order in four of the last five innings. Brown fanned three and relied on his teammates who responded with defensive support.

The Crimson committed only two errors and made several key plays, which must be an encouraging sign for coach Loyal Park after watching the legacies of Marvelous Marv Throneberry who inhabited his infield last year.