Baseball practice had run to more than three hours yesterday afternoon, when Norman Shepard finally called a halt and headed for a seat against the far wall of Briggs Cage. As his players trouped slowly outside, Shepard began talking about the team he is trying to put together for the coming spring.

The words came slowly at first, then faster; and they ran together in a manner that was more than faintly suggestive of that new language created within the past decade by Casey Stengel. Shepard's discourse had much of the charm of Stengelese, and fortunately it was far less confusing. It seemed, somehow, as if all baseball coaches ought to talk that way.

Shepard spoke first about his catcher, John Davis--the team captain and a consistent, wholly dependable veteran. Here is one position, at least, where the varsity can expect to be "solid." But else-where, the picture is far more uncertain.

At first base, Shepard will play his most promising sophomore, Al Martin. Martin was captain of the freshman team last year and played at second. "We have no experienced first basemen at all this year," Shepard explained, "so we just had to switch Martin in there."

George Harrington will be the Crimson's second baseman, Shepard continued, and Mouse Kasargian will be back for another year at short. The third base spot will go either to Jerry Sullivan or to Chet Boulris, previously known to Cambridge only in the capacity of football-player.

The three leading candidates for the outfield are Mo Balboni, Charlie Ravenel, and Doug Brown; but Shepard admitted that the situation there is still far from clear. This left only pitching, the most uncertain part of the pre-season prognosis--"and the most crucial," as Shepard said with some emphasis. Through the whole of the afternoon he had paraded one man after another to the Briggs Cage mound, as part of an almost desperate search to uncover some new pitching talent. So far, apparently, the search has not turned up any new Bob Fellers.

A serious blow in this department was the recent loss of left-handed junk-baller Gerry Emmet. Emmet had two or three fine games to his credit last year and might have been the top Crimson pitcher this spring. However, he injured his shoulder playing for the squash team during the winter months, and is now a very shaky prospect at best.

Shepard also has two men from last year's jayvees to work with, Renny Johnston and Ed Wadsworth. But the pitchers he will most rely on are Byron Johnson, 4-1 with the varsity last year, and sophomore Wally Cook.

"Johnson is strictly a control pitcher," Shepard said; "he can pitch to the corners; we used him largely in relief last year; and he is the smartest of the group.... Cook? Well, Cook has more stuff than Johnson--a good curve-ball and a pretty good fast one, too.... The others? Well, they haven't shown us a lot yet.... My gosh if anything happens to those first two follows (cook and Johnson), the games will last till after dark."

Shepard was asked about his hitting this year, and at first he just shook his head. "Well, maybe Martin, maybe Harrington, maybe Boulris," he said after a moment. "But we've had some real good hitters the past few years--I mean fellows like Cleary and Hathaway and Saia--and my good gracious how we're going to miss them."