Baseballers to Square Off Against MIT

How does Harvard's baseball team spell relief?

"M-I-T," or so the team hopes.

After a disappointing weekend which saw the team lose three of four games to division-rival Yale, the Crimson (4-10 Ivy, 8-14 Overall) will travel down the river to that glorified vo-tech school to play the traditional-ly-cream puffy Beavers.

"Right now, everyone is a little bit down," Bryan Brissette said. "It's tough going into a weekend knowing that you have to win some games, only to not get the job done."

"To be honest, everyone is a little depressed right now," Mark Levy added. "For the most part, our season came down to this past weekend, and we blew it."

To say that the team completely "blew it" this weekend against Yale is maybe an exaggeration, but the trip to New Haven sure proved disappointing. The Crimson went into the contest needing to win at least two of the four games, and only ended up winning one: a 4-3 triumph in the last game fueled by a James Crowley grand slam.

The team lost the other three games by 10-1, 4-3 and 7-0 counts.

"It's not just that we lost, but that we didn't play very well at all," Eric Weissman said. "It just wasn't our best--and we know it."

This afternoon against MIT, the team will have the opportunity to work out the kinks before resuming Ivy League play this weekend with four games against Brown.

"Wednesday's game come at an important point in the season," Brissette said. "We can either roll over now, or finish the year strongly--and the MIT game will give us a chance to start taking the latter route."

Despite MIT's positioning at a juncture spot on the Crimson schedule, Harvard is not about to take the Beavers for granted, despite a 9-0 blow-out win last year and a general history of dominating the Techies.

First, the game last year was marked by an exceptionally poor Beaver performance in what was otherwise a successful year. The team went on to win the ECAC championship.

Second, word around Cambridge is that MIT is vastly improved over last season. The Beavers' improvement was evidenced in a drubbing of BU earlier this season.

And third, MIT is guaranteed to be up for the game. Techies in general always seem to get a little bit fired-up about the prospect of bettering their liberal arts neighbors up the river--whether on the baseball diamond or battling for a place in line at a Wellesley kegger.

"We're definitely not taking them lightly," Levy said. "We know that they are going to be good and we know that they see us as rivals. It will be a tough game."

"There's no need to worry about us not being ready," Brissette said. "MIT is a good team, and , besides, we need this one bad."

Action will get started at MIT's baseball field at 3:30 p.m.