'Omaha is hot, dry and boring," reads an old Crimson sports page. "The dusty air, blown in off the great plains, is arid and uncomfortable." As the "color" piece goes on, dated 1973, it becomes clear that the on-location reporter hates Omaha. Still, he betrays his excitement about the event he is covering: the 27th annual College World Series, where the presence of a Harvard baseball team is only slightly less likely than Restic's boys making it to the Hula Bowl. This was some show--travelling all the way out there to watch one of the greatest squads in Harvard history take on the behemoths from the West and the South and the big state universities. The reporter trotted off to the stadium early for Harvard's first game; the Ivy Leaguers were the "sentimental favorite," and all kinds of people were swarming around the 9500 seats--journalists, citizens of Omaha, major league scouts squinting through smoke and hat brims in the flat Nebraska sun. The reporter must have wondered how on earth he was going to come up with something lyrical about Omaha to spice up the day's coverage.

He didn't have to worry, it turned out, because he was packing his bags, along with the team, almost before the Crimson uniforms got dirty. They dropped two straight. The problem was this: Harvard had to win the first game, play from strength--which in this case was their starting pitcher Roswell Brayton. Brayton had been first team All-East for two years running. He'd barely lost a game in that time, and in 1972 had performed the astonishing feat of pitching 40 straight innings without giving up a run (when he finally did, it was unearned)--he finished the year with an ERA of .027. This year it had hovered around .100. If Harvard was to have any luck at Omaha, the first game was key. Trouble was, Harvard drew USC for the opener, the defending national championship team. Baseball is serious there. In late October, when the real World Series is over and the major league players have all gone home to hunt and fish and sell insurance, and the fans in Boston already gnashing their teeth over the Patriots, they're still playing baseball at places like Southern Cal and Arizona State. Bats crack over the desert almost all year round there--if Harvard plays 40 games in a season, USC plays 150, and the scouts squat in the hot bleacher sun scanning the diamond for kids like Fred Lynn.

Brayton was on the mound that day, and Fred Lynn, also a college senior, was seventh at bat. Rozzie struck him out. Lynn came up two more times and never got on base; Brayton pitched "well enough to win," said the Harvard coach. But the USC pitcher pitched better, and Harvard lost, 4-1. The team dropped the clincher to Georgia Southern the following day and went back to Cambridge.

Fred Lynn and Rozzie Brayton got drafted by the big leagues that year, and after graduation they each joined the Boston Red Sox organization. The Red Sox nurture a lot of farm teams, though, and since Lynn was drafted second and Brayton tenth, the two never met until spring training in Winterhaven, Florida, a while back:

Brayton: Hey, you remember me?

Lynn (puzzled): Ah...

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Brayton: No, you remember--the College World Series in '73: I pitched against you.

Lynn (embarrassed): Um, you know, I just can't place the exact game...there were so many....

Brayton: Harvard--you beat us, 4-11

Lynn: Oh yeah, that's right, you were the, ah, yeah, I remember now....

Baseball's that way: Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee was in the locker room last October after Boston had lost the World Series. Someone was praising Reds pitcher Don Gullett. "Right," said Lee, "Don Gullett is going to the Hall of Fame. And I'm going to the Eliot Lounge to play bumper pool." So it goes. Little more than two years from that day in Omaha, Fred Lynn is the sensation of baseball, Athlete of the Year. And Brayton? Brayton's at Barney's, eating a roast beef sandwich.

"I'm pissed off," he says right away, sipping his beer. It's hard to generalize about what a professional athlete looks like--Brayton doesn't wear a suede jacket and smoke Tiparillo Slims: maybe that's what the successful ones affect. Brayton is dressed in a kind of messy, informal Brooks Brothers, probably the same way he dressed a few years back when he was in the Owl Club. His life now, two and a half years after graduation, is closer to that limbo of college than that of his contemporary alumni, who have neatened up by now. Brayton's still a professional baseball player, and after two and a half seasons, he's a borderline case, teetering, insecure about his position, and very, very vulnerable. He's semi-successful, a make-or-break case.. If there are six planes of consciousness in the spiritual world of the Boston Red Sox organization, Brayton has made it halfway; an exemplary mortal. He began at the bottom, with the Elmira Red Sox. He actually transcended the next rung, skipping the Winterhaven farm team, and played for all of 1974 for the Red Sox in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Then last year he made the Bristol (Conn.) Red Sox, of the Eastern League, Double A ball, a prayer away from the Pawtucket Red Sox which is in turn a prayer away from Boston and Fenway and eternal bliss.

"I'm pissed off. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I want to shoot my mouth off, sort of. I mean, I wouldn't say some of this stuff for the hell of it, you know, say it to the Globe. But with The Crimson I figure I can talk."

He talks. In an immediate sense, what's bugging Brayton is that he didn't get invited--for the third year in a row--to "winter ball," the Instructional League for the 20 or so hottest prospects in the organization for extra practice and extra leverage with the powers that be. But the problem is more than this, involving the entire process of making one's way to the majors without getting the ax. You have to be noticed.