The strong right arm of Ray Peters had one of its better days yesterday, as the Harvard baseball team closed its season with a 4-1 win over Boston University at Splinter Stadium.
The bespectacled sophomore scattered four singles, and walked only two en route to his ninth victory of the year. The 16 Terriers he whiffed yesterday brought his season total to 109, and matched his previous game-high in that department.
Newly-elected captain Carter Lord supplied the big hit for the Crimson -- a clutch single in the seventh that drove in the winning runs. Third-baseman Phil Smith had the best day at the plate, collecting two of the five Harvard hits.
Yesterday's contest, played in beautiful baseball weather before 50 spectators escaping last-minute pre-exam cramming, marked the sixth straight Greater Boston League win for the Crimson against no losses. Coach Norm Sheperd's squad closed the year with a 15-7 record overall, including two victories over NCAA-bound Holy Cross and Boston College.
For six innings yesterday it was an old-fashioned pitcher's duel, with B.U.'s Nick Stipanovich matching Peters' showing. In fact, Harvard managed only one hit off Stipanovich till the seventh inning, when the Crimson rallied for two runs and sent the righthander to the showers.
Both teams collected unearned runs in the second inning. Tom Thornton, the football quarterback and leftfielder who contributed a clutch error to the Harvard seventh-frame uprising, started things off by beating out a grounder on a close play at first. He stole second, moved to third on a passed ball by Crimson catcher Jeff Hall, and scored on a squeeze bunt.
Harvard came back in the bottom of the second to load the bases with no outs and no hits Lord and Joe O'Donnell walked, and Pete Karegeannes, trying to sacrifice, got on a B.U. error. Hall popped out, but second-baseman Dick Manchester drove in Lord on a suicide squeeze bunt down the third-base line.
Peters shut out the Terriers on two hits from then on, while his teammates finally got to Stipanovich in the seventh. Smith and Dan Hootstein the rightfielder playing in his last game for the Crimson, singled, and both advanced a base when Thornton had trouble picking up Hootstein's shot to left. They both scored on Lord's blast to center, and those two tallies proved to be the winning runs.
Harvard added an "insurance run" in the eighth to close the scoring, the big blow being Jeff Hall's long double. The stocky catcher moved to third on a fielder's choice and was brought across the plate by third-baseman Bill Cobb's sacrifice bunt.
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