Brandeis Punishes Crimson Nine, 7-5; Ten Walks Pace Judges to GBL Title

Ron Blomberg, Al Rosen and Richie Shienblum come to mind, but after them a good Jewish ballplayer is hard to find.

But you have to look no farther than Waltham to find a good Jewish school playing some steady if not spectacular baseball. And though Brandeis University, which defeated Harvard yesterday, 7-5, didn't knock down the walls of Jericho with its bats, the win was enough to give the Judges their third consecutive Greater Boston League title and sixth straight win over the Crimson.

Harvard outhit Brandeis 7-4, but that's where the palm-slapping ends. Lefty starter Jim Keyte, who came into the contest with the second best earned run average in the GBL, suffered through his worst outing of the year.

The sophomore hurler was tagged for all seven Brandeis runs, and though two tallies were unearned, six were scored by batters Keyte had walked. In all, 17 batters were passed on the day, ten through the courtesy of Harvard pitching.

Coach Alex Nahigian, whose substitution tactics worked wonders in the first game at Dartmouth on Saturday, had no reprieves from the Judges yesterday.

"It's simple. When we don't get good pitching we don't play good baseball," Nahigian said afterwards.

The first-year mentor saw that Keyte's mound problems were due to the fact that he had "changed his motion without telling me a week-and-a-half ago. I have no idea why he did it. Unbelievable. I changed him back in the third inning," Nahigian said.

It was 3-0 Brandeis by then, as two walks, a Steve Finnegan single and a successful double steal of second and home by Finnegan and Tim Perdios gave the Judges two runs in the first. The following inning two more walks, a questionable hit batsman (recipient Sid Carpenter didn't even go to first) and a passed ball gave Brandeis its three-run lead.

Harvard scratched a run in the fourth when Mike Stenhouse walked (at which point Massport began building a turnstile at first) and came in on a Jim Peccerillo sacrifice fly.

But Brandeis looked for four more runs in the fifth. Keyte departed with one out and two runs in after Jim Russomagno took him deep for a left field double, and then Paul McOsker walked the first two men he faced in relief to bring in the other two.

The batsmen came back for four runs on five hits in the sixth and seventh to pull within two and force the departure of the Waltham flamethrower, Bob Birrell. But Kevin Moore came through with three scoreless innings out of the pen, and Brandeis made no mistakes the rest of the way.

THE NOTEBOOK: It looks like Larry Brown (5-2) will go against Cornell on Friday and Ron Stewart (3-3) and Tim Clifford (5-3) at Army on Saturday. The math is easy now--Harvard must win all three games.... "Bazooka" Joe Wark gunned down two Brandeis runners attempting to steal yesterday with incredible throws.