Baseball Looks for Red Rolfe Supremacy

The Harvard baseball team welcomes back its offensive and defensive anchor today as it tries to move into sole possession of first place in the Red Rolfe Division.

Senior Brian Ralph, the 1997 Ivy League Player of the Year, is off the disabled list and will trot out to center field for his first game of the season. The Crimson (11-7, 3-1 Ivy) will have doubleheaders against Penn (7-13-1, 4-4) and Columbia (5-17, 2-6) today and tomorrow, respectively, in its first Ancient Eight home game s at D'Donnell Field.

"We are excited to have him back," said senior shortstop David Forst, who has led the team with 14 RBI and a .516 slugging percentage in Ralph's absence. "We can use his spark in the lineup, and it will be good to have him tracking down balls in center field."

"Having Brian back is going to be a big boost to us," said Harvard Coach Joe Walsh. "His timing will be off a little bit, so we might have to move him down in the lineup. But he can get himself on base with a walk or a base-hit bunt. He is a big part of our offense and a huge part of our defense."

That defense has helped the Crimson join Yale and Brown in a three-way tie for first place. Harvard is second in the league with a .954 fielding percentage and first in team batting average at .319. The quick offensive and defensive start has helped the young pitching staff, which lost Ivy Pitcher of the Year Frank Hogan to graduation early in the season.

"I am confident going into this weekend," said junior pitcher Andrew Duffell (1-1, 0.87 ERA), who will take the mound against the Quakers today. "Our pitchers are throwing well, our hitters are hitting well, and I think we are ready. I am going to have to throw strikes, and my infielders are going to make the plays."

Joining Duffell in this weekend's rotation are freshman John Birtwell (3-0, 0.00) and juniors Garett Vail (1-1, 4.67) and Donny Jamieson (1-1, 5.87). Birtwell, who leads the Crimson with 17 strikeouts, was last week's Ivy Rookie of the Week and the Ivy Pitcher of the Week the week before.

After taking three of four games on last weekend's road trip to Princeton and Cornell, Harvard hosts the bottom two teams in the Lou Gehrig Division, which contains the four southern Ivy League schools. Paul Fernandes announced that he will step down as Columbia Head Coach at the end of this year. After losing four games to Penn, the Lions went 2-2 last weekend against Brown and Yale. The Quakers lost all four games against the Bears and the Elis.

But the season is young and both opponents have good players. Penn's Drew Corradini leads the Ancient Eight with 31 hits and .431 average. The Quakers also feature Mark Nagata, who led the Ivy League in batting average last season, and Armen Simonian, who was among the league leaders in both hitting and pitching in 1997. Columbia junior Dan Gati is second in the league with 32 strikeouts.

With Ralph healthy, the Crimson hopes to make a strong run at a second consecutive Ivy League title. Second baseman Hal Carey and catcher Jason Keck, both juniors, lead the team with .357 averages, and junior outfielder Andrew Huling has 14 RBI. But Harvard is not yet in midseason form.

"We are not yet satisfied with how we are playing," Forst said. "We have been making a lot of mental mistakes on the bases and in the field, and those are the things that hurt you in the long run. Physical errors happen but we have got to eliminate the mental mistakes."

"We have to start playing aggressively and stay loose," Walsh said. "We have not been playing our game defensively, and we are not clicking offensively. We have talked about it, and I hope we come out and play with intensity and enthusiasm."

Despite imperfection, the Crimson has played its way into first place without Ralph, who hit .438 last year and platooned the outfield. Harvard is excited about its first Ivy League home games, which will be the hottest tickets in town for baseball fans, especially since the Red Sox home opener is already sold out.

"We can be a pretty exciting club," Walsh said. "We have stolen home plate a few times this year, we hit and run, we bunt, and we have some kids that are capable of playing some good defense. I would really like to see some of the students come down and check us out. If you like baseball, you are going to like our ballclub this year."