PRINCETON, N.J.--This one came in a quick, painful burst, and was held there by the chill of the long afternoon. Deadlocked 7-7 after nine and one-half innings, combatants Harvard and Princeton were suddenly no longer variables in their 1979 Eastern League opener.

And though after a single, sacrifice, walk, error, and wild pitch the Tigers would finally secure an 8-7 triumph for themselves, they would not do it alone.

The aforementioned "error" never was. With one out in the tenth and runners on first and second, Princeton third baseman Bill Miller knocked Ron Stewart's 2-1 offering down the third base line. Harvard's Mark Bingham bobbled the ball but threw over to Stewart covering for the apparent out.

Enter Charlie Fuchs, a base umpire with either poor circulation, intense hunger (it was well past 6 p.m. at the time), or a Princeton degree. Fuchs called Miller safe at first, and the shaken Stewart and incredulous Harvard squad could not recover.

The error loaded the bases, and after Stewart fired two strikes by Tiger Rod Shepard, his next pitch bounced inevitably askew. Joe DeGeorge scored the winning run.

"I had the best possible angle on that play." Fuchs said after the game. "I was blocked out when the pitcher (Stewart) came down the line to cover, but I called it the way it looked. You know, you only get one chance in this game, not three," he added.

A Terrible Way

"That's a home call if I've ever seen one," commented first-year coach Alex Nahigian. "What a terrible way to lose a ball-game," he added.

Stewart was upset over the call, but realistic. "It would have been nice to get the out on that play," he said afterwards, "but they still would have had a man on third. In that way, you can't really say that the call cost us the game."

Stewart added that "I can say for sure, though, that if there had been two outs when I had two strikes on the next guy (Shepard), I certainly wouldn't have thrown the curve ball to him, like I did with one out." "The curve ball" turned out to be the wild pitch.

The setback left the Crimson 0-1 in the Eastern League, a circuit in which a team cannot afford to lose more than three games if it has any kind of title aspirations.

In the Saddle

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the "Decline and Fall of the Umpire" tenth inning was that it saddled Stewart with the loss. The hard-throwing junior, who has been a mainstay on the Harvard staff for three years, had entered the game with two outs in the fifth and Princeton ahead, 7-4.

Steward proceeded to hold the first fifteen batters he faced hitless (the only Tigers who reached base came on two walks and an error) until DeGeorge led off the tenth with a single.

Meanwhile the batsmen had come through to tie the game in the top of the sixth. After Burke St. John reached on an error and Joe Wark walked, junior Bobby Kelley banged a double into right center field to pull Harvard within to one. Mike Stenhouse then scored Kelley with a single to right to make it 7-all.

Harvard Record

The RBI for Stenhouse was his second of the game and gave the junior sole possession of the Harvard career mark for runs batted in (81).

The Crimson led, 2-0, until the third when Princeton touched Harvard starter Rob Alevizos for three runs. A triple by Stenhouse and a double by DH Jim Peccerillo (2-for-5, 3 RBIs) put the batsmen ahead in the fifth 4-3, but the Tigers went crazy in their half of the inning, capping Alevizos and relief man Paul McOsker for a pair of talleys each, and so ushering in Stewart and the merry miscues of Charlie Fuchs.

HARVARD (6-6) 200 023 000 0--7 9 2

Princeton (2-6) 003 040 000 1--8 9 2

H--Rob Alevizos, Paul McOsker (5), Ron Stewart (5) and Joe Wark.

P--Mark Lockenmeyer, Chris Cascia (10), and Rod Shepard.