Injuries Devastate Hopeful Batsmen

Hamstrings, hamstrings, hamstrings.

At no time in recent memory has that macabre word been heard so consistently set next to the adjective "pulled" as in talk of the 1993-94 Harvard baseball team. Three key players this past season--sophomore Joe Weidenbach, junior Bryan Brissette and sophomore Marc Levy--all went down with the painful malady whose very utterance might evoke cringes.

Add that to the broken hand of captain Mike Giardi, the Ivy League Player-of-the-year, and you get a season that bags to be described as unlucky.

Just don't tell that to Harvard's players.

"You can't make excuses," says Levy. "You can't talk about the season that might have been. We had our chances, and we didn't take advantage of them."

"It's been rough--we've really had to adjust," freshman Mike Hochanadel says. "But you can't write off the season just because of that. There are a lot of factors."

A look at the season attests to that. More than anything, the team's problem was consistency.

"We just couldn't get it together for an extended period of time," Giardi says."We'd lose a couple of games and then we'd get in a rut. That's the way the whole season went."

The year didn't start off all that bad.

Although the team dropped its three games of the year on a spring training trip to Florida, it recovered to win five of its next seven, including a sweep over Canisius and a split with Princeton.

But at that point, the team got streaky. It dropped its next three games, getting swept by Cornell, and losing a 3-1 decision to New Hampshire.

Then, after splitting doubleheaders with Cornell and Penn, it lost three more, dropping a 4-3 decision to Holy Cross and getting swept by Yale on the first day of a double doubleheader weekend.

On the second day of the doubleheader, April 18, the team split with Yale, and its win in the second game ushered in its longest winning streak of the season, consisting of four games. After the Yale win, the team beat MIT and swept Brown on the first day of another double doubleheader weekend.

From that point on, though, the team's fortunes went south. First, it dropped two to Brown on the second day of the four-game weekend.

Then, it put in a mediocre performance at the baseball Beanpot, losing to Northeastern in the first round, 4-1, and tying Boston College in the second, 7-7.

And then, it dropped five of its last seven games, losing three of four to Dartmouth, beating Boston College and then losing to Northeastern and UMass.

The UMass loss was typical of the team's frustrating year, as it blew a comfortable 5-1 lead in a matter of two innings.

Harvard finished the year tied for last place with Brown in the Red Rolfe Division of the Ivy League. Yale, which finished with a 14-6 Ivy record (22-17 overall), won its third straight championship.

"It's a disappointing way to end the season," says Giardi, who led the team with a.435 average, despite being sidelined for the last three weeks of the season. "But what can you do? The team has a long ways to go."

BASEBALL

Record: 13-22-1

Ivy League: 7-13

Key Players: Mike Giardi (.435), Joe Weidenbach (.345), Mark Cicero (2-3, 3.46 ERA)

Seniors: Mike Giardi, Bill Madden, Tony Lancette