EIBL Disbands; Ivy League Split in Two

The Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League (EIBL) has been disbanded.

In the off-season, the perennially poor Army and Navy programs decided to showcase their "talent" elsewhere and left the eight Ivy League schools behind.

Ergo, the Ivy League has been reborn. This year, the League has been split into two divisions: the northern schools in the "Red Rolfe" division, the southern schools in the "Lou Gehrig" division.

The Rolfe Division will contain Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Brown, while the Gehrig Division will include Cornell, Columbia, Princeton, and Pennsylvania. The division winner will play a best-of-three playoff for the Ivy title.

Harvard will face each of its North foes four times in two doubleheaders on the same weekend. The Crimson will compete against the teams from the South only twice, in one twinbill.

This new format should benefit the Crimson.

"In the past, everyone wanted to beat Harvard, so they would throw their best two pitchers against us all the time," Captain Mike Hill said. "This year, they will need to throw their top four pitchers in the same weekend, something which we plan to capitalize on."

What happened to the Crimson last year on the weekend of April 25 and 26 exemplifies Hill's point.

Harvard went into Yale for a doubleheader on the 25th and wound up splitting the two games, pounding the Elis in the second. However, the next day the Crimson ran into an inspired Columbia team. The Lions, the cellar-dwellers last year in baseball as well as in football, started their top two pitchers and swept the Crimson, thereby ending all hope of a league title for Harvard.

Yale walked away with the EIBL title last year, while Pennsylvania finished in second, one game ahead of the Crimson.

This year, the Elis again find themselves in first place in the preseason polls, although they lost several starters.

Yale features superstar Blair Hodson, who tore apart the EIBL last year with a .429 BA, with seven doubles, seven round-trippers, and 34 RBI's.

The Crimson, however, feels confident it can overtake the Elis and anybody else. "If we can be consistent, then we will surprise a lot of people," Hill said.

BASEBALL

Coach: Leigh Hogan

Captain: Mike Hill

1992 Overall Record: 20:15

1992 EIBL, Record: 8.6