The varsity baseball team starts the business half of its schedule today with a home game against Northeastern at 3 p.m.

In the next 17 days, the Crimson has 9 games scheduled, all of them against Eastern League or Greater Boston League contenders and all but one of them at home (the other is just across the river at M.I.T.).

Among the teams trooping into Kindlestick Park in the next three weeks will be Eastern League co-champions Navy and Columbia, title contenders Army, Princeton, and Brown, plus Boston College, Boston University, and Northeastern, the only three teams given a chance to end Harvard's two-year domination of the greater Boston League.

The heavy schedule is likely to give Coach Norm Shepard's pitching staff a pain in its fancy earned-run average. Lee Sargent (1 win, no losses, 0.75 E.R.A.), Andy Luther (2-0, 1.38), and Paul del Rossi (3-0, 1.12) probably will start the three games this weekend in one order or another.

Del Rossi vs. Bruins

Chances are Shepard will save Del Rossi for Saturday's game with Brown, the only Eastern League opponent this weekend. That would leave either Luther or Sargent to face Northeastern today with the other one getting the unenviable task of facing Bob Walsh of B.U. tomorrow. But Shepard might want to give Kent Mitchell or sophomore John Scott a start, but the chances are that both will be available for relief duty.

On Friday and Saturday the Crimson batters will see the first two of a host of star pitchers who will come trooping into Cambridge in the next few weeks. B.U.'s Walsh, who threw eight and a third innings of one-hit relief against Connecticut Saturday, will be followed by Brown's Doug Nelson, who pitched the Bruins to a 5-1 win over Harvard as a junior last year.

The Crimson hitters may get one break from good pitching today when Northeastern's sophomore southpaw Steve Grolnic takes the mound for his first college start. Grolnic compiled an unspectacular record for the Husky freshmen last year and is the number two man on the staff behind mammoth righthander Dick McPherson, who shut out Tufts 3-0 on a two-hitter Monday.

Batters Break Ice

Since the Crimson sluggers broke loose for 11 hits and nine runs against Springfield Saturday, the hitting statistics have begun to show a degree of respectability. Outfielder George Neville chipped in a triple and a single against the Gymnasts and currently leads the squad with a .389 average.

Tom Stephenson, captain and first baseman, is hitting .310 and leads in RBI's with 6. Junior catcher Gary Miller follows at .307 with shortstop Jim Tobin at .290 and leadoff man Skip Falcone, a second baseman, at .287.

Still missing from the batting order is someone who can supply power consistently. No one on the Crimson squad has hit a home run in seven games this spring.