Baseballers Lookin' for Fun and Feelin' Groovy

If given the choice, Harvard's baseball team certainly wouldn't choose to be in its third-place position in the four-team Red Rolfe division at this point in the season. A solid four games in back of division-leading Yale with only six league games left, the Crimson (9-14 overall, 4-8 Ivy) has an outside-at-best shot at realizing its season-long goal: to garner at last a share of the division title.

But that's not to say that the team hasn't derived any benefits from its position. In fact, for future seasons, the relatively-young team has learned an extremely important lesson from it in just the last few games: the less you press, the more you win.

"The thing that has been our big problem since I've been here is that we get anxious when we are in a good position, we get nervous, and we don't play well," junior Bo Bernhard said. "A baseball game is not necessarily about who is superior, but often about who presses more."

Those are not unsupported words, either.

This past weekend, the Crimson traveled to Yale for its best shot of the season at realizing its division-title aspirations: four games against the then-two-games-up Elis. Harvard lost the first three badly and then, with all hopes of even splitting the series down the tubes, pulled out the last one, 4-3.

"You know, the thing that was so weird about last weekend is that we won that last game," captain Mike Giardi said. I think it shows both what a gutsy team we have, and what we can do if we relax.

Bernhard's and Giardi's theory was put to a further test Wednesday when the team took on a better-than-you-would-think MIT team. The Engineers were the ECAC champs last season, and, in general, have a strong, young club. This fact, however, didn't stop the Crimson from traveling downriver, putting in one of its best performances of the seasons and properly kicking the snot out of the Techies, 15-6.

"It felt wonderful," Bernhard said. "We put everything out of our mind and just went at them. We gave them what we have, we played like the team we are---it was a good feeling."

This weekend, the team will give the "no press equals win" theory a third test when it hosts Brown for four games. The Crimson will take the Bears on in doubleheader on Saturday and a doubleheader on Sunday.

The Bears are the one team that separates the Crimson from the cellar in the Red Rolfe league. possessing a 4-8 league mark and an abysmal 5-20 overall mark.

The team is not a total cream- puff, though. In all fairness, it has lost a number of close games this season, and spilt with Dartmouth, the number-two team in the Red Rolfe, last weekend.

"They're going to be tough," Giardi said. "At this point in time, we've got to be on our game no matter who we are playing--everyone in the league is good.

"Brown will be a good team for us to test ourselves against," Bernhard said. "If we just relax and play like we have the past couple of games, we should do OK."

Notes....Yale and Penn have established themselves as the two top teams in their respective divisions in the league this season. Yale leads the Red Rolfe Division with a 12-2 overall and 8-4 league mark, while Penn leads the Lou Gehrig Division with a 12-2 overall mark and an 8-4 record in league play.

Of the two divisions, the Lou Gehrig seems to be the stronger--by far. After Penn, Princeton is in second with a 14-12 overall mark and a 7-5 league mark; Columbia is in third (11-18 overall, 7-6 league); and Cornell is in fourth (7-14 overall, 5-7 league).

After Yale in the Red Rolfe Division, Dartmouth is in second with an 9-14 overall record and a 5-8 league mark; Harvard is third (9-14 overall, 4-8 league); and Brown is fourth (5-20 overall, 4-8 league).

Prior to the MIT game, the Crimson were led in hitting by Giardi, with a .468 average. Second was junior Joe Weidenbach (.400) and third is freshman Mike Hochanadel (.327)

Honchanadel leads the team in home runs with three, followed by Giardi (two) and junior Jamie Crowley (two)

In Pitching, Harvard is led by sophomore Chips Harris, who has maintained a nifty 1.96 earned-run-average in 18.3 innings of work.