The outlook, to borrow a phrase from "Casey at the Bot," is not brilliant.
The Crimson nine dropped a 3-2 squeaker to Army in the first game of Saturday's twin-bill, and the end of its supremacy in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League is now in sight.
Although Harvard came back with a vengeance in the nightcap, throttling the Cadets, 11-4, there appears to be little hope of overhauling the front-running Pennsylvania Quakers.
The split at Army left the Crimson's EIBL mark at 5-4 with five games left to play, while the Quakers have already piled up a 10-1 record. Only a Crimson surge in its last five EIBL contests, coupled with a total Penn collapse, will put Harvard back in the title picture.
But since Harvard does not get another crack at the Quakers and must rely on weaker teams to beat them, the Crimson's chances seem strictly mathematics.
Late-game blues
In Saturday's first game, the Cadets found enough firepower to frustrate Harvard ace Don Driscoll's bid for his sixth consecutive victory. In what looked like a replay of Friday's defeat at Cornell, the Crimson succumbed to a late-game rally.
Driscoll pitched gamely through the first five innings, while the Harvard offense could generate only two runs off erratic Army hurier Goerge Koontz. Leigh Hogan brought Dan Williams home with a ground single to right in the third inning, and Joe Sciolla picked up an RBI walk in the fifth.
But Army's catcher Dietz touched Driscoll for a home run to open the bottom of the sixth, and the blast ignited the Cadets. A pinch-hit single, a double and a walk, sandwiched around a ground out to Durso at shortstop, loaded the bases.
After Driscoll retired Emerson on a pop-up. Army's Chelman wristed one of Driscoll's hard sliders into right field to plate the winning runs.
The nightcap bore little resemblance to the opener, as four Army pitchers paraded to the mound in the first inning.
The hurlers avoided home plate as they would a rare tropical disease in walking five Crimson batsmen and plunking yet another in the back. Combined with singles by Hogan and Driscoll and a resounding Williams double down the left-field line, the wild streak produced six Harvard runs.
The Crimson posted five more runs in the sixth to put the game out of reach. Leon Goetz followed a Sciolla double with a drive that appeared to clear the centerfield fence. The umpire ruled, however, that the ball had gone through the fence, not ever it, and Goetz scored instead on Driscoll's single. A Williams home run to left and a Durso double brought in the final Crimson runs.
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MONDAY, APRIL 26