Despite the rantings of one of the most vociferous visiting coaches seen at Soldiers Field in recent years, the varsity baseball team nipped Tufts, 4 to 3, in its home opener yesterday.

Byron Johnson turned in a strong job on the mound, limiting the Jumbos to four singles and displaying steadiness and confidence he never seemed to have last season. With men on base--and there weren't many--he bore down coolly and finished the game as sturdily as he began it.

Meanwhile, by far the most active operative on the Tufts side of the field was coach Bob Meeham, who carried on a running verbal battle with the plate umpire that would have earned him a thumb and a shower in any professional game. His loud-spoken comments to the unfortunate arbiter included such pleasantries as "rabbit-ears," "Get into the ball game," and assorted profanities.

At first these exchanges were sparked by mere ball and strike calls. But in the third inning, when the Crimson scored all its runs, Meeham stopped play and charged about the diamond disputing one call for a full five minutes, finally declaring that he was continuing the game under protest.

As a matter of fact, there was some justice to his complaint. The Crimson had men on first and second, one out, and two runs in, when Chet Boulris lofted a pop fly at the plate. The Jumbo catcher missed the ball cleanly, it fell in fair territory, then bounced foul. This clearly made it a foul ball, but the catcher snapped a throw to third base for a force play.

When the umpire disallowed this, Meeham rushed to the scene to claim the ball was fair afer all. He soon shifted his ground to the stronger plea that the infield fly rule should be in force and the batter ruled automatically out. The umpire's apparent answer to this was, first of all, that he hadn't invoked the infield fly rule, which is left to his descretion, and secondly, that the rule didn't apply because the ball had bounced foul.

Meeham finally retired, thumbing through his rule book, and Boulris went on to line a scoring single to left. Right fielder Mo Balboni followed suit with a shot to center, sending home the fourth run of the inning. The earlier tallies came on a single by captain John Davis and a throwing error on Charlie Ravenel's grounder, after Mouse Kasarjian had walked and George Harrington had popped a bunt single over the charging second baseman's head.

This outburst erased a one-run Tufts lead built up by a walk, stolen base, and single in the first inning. Johnson's only other moment of weakness came in the sixth, when he walked the first two men. A stroke of bad luck filled the bases when, on a ground ball, Harrington's peg to second arrived just too late to force the runner. A fielder's choice and a sacrifice fly then brought in two runs.

The varsity had a chance to add an insurance run in the sixth. Harrington blasted a triple to right, but was cut down at the place when batter Al Martin missed connections on an attempted squeeze.

An early morning plane takes the Crimson to Annapolis today, where the nine opens the defense of its Eastern Inter-collegiate League championship against Navy. Coach Norm Shepard has named sophomore right-hander Wally Cook, pitching ace of last year's freshman team, to start on the mound