Batsmen Edge Northeastern

To use the football analogy would be too easy. But it's tempting. Because yesterday afternoon at Northeastern, the Crimson batsmen engaged the latter in one of those annual baseball-turned-gridiron classics, with Harvard emerging the victor by two touchdowns and a field goal. But that's too easy now, don't you think?

There was really little difficulty, though, in the manner by which the Crimson disposed of the Huskies. A quick 2-0 lead after one inning became six-love after four and 11-love after five, and that was that. The final? Nineteen to two.

The recipient of Harvard's big bats (32 runs, 41 hits--27 yesterday--in the last two games) was freshman hurler Ron Stewart, who had as much trouble in recording his fourth and the Crimson's twelfth triumph of the season as the number one picks in the housing lotteries have in finding a good room.

Stewart hurled pigeon eggs for five frames before giving way to two relievers over the final four innings. The reason? Stewart will be on the mound come Friday when Columbia and its unblemished Eastern record travel to Cambridge in what should be a far truer indication of the strength of Loyal Park's crew than any of the contests thus far.

And if you have to hold anyone responsible for Harvard's 19-run outburst, a good place to begin pointing fingers would be freshman second-sacker Mike Stenhouse, who a) went five for six at the plate, b) hit for the cycle and added an extra single and a sacrifice fly to boot, c) scored four runs and drove in six, and d) popped to short in the ninth. That last one was simply to show that nobody's perfect.

Not to be outdone, Dave Singleton, Paul Halas and Morgan St. John all chipped in with a triumvirate (i.e.-three) of hits, while Rick Pearce reached base enough times to score three runs.

As a matter of fact, a quick check of the scorebook reveals that each of the Crimson starters registered a minimum of two hits.

The bottom line? There's no way to report a 19-2 score without resorting to the old football analogy. Now, had the final been 23-2 it would have been another thing. Then everyone would have assumed that it was simply a Crimson-Independent affair.