ANNAPOLIS, Md.--They had survived the 8:40 a.m. Friday shuttle to Newark where two players took cuts at their air sickness bags. They had stomached sleeping in barracks and a sleeping base umpire in Princeton.
But they suffered no longer after Saturday afternoon's crucial twinbill with Navy was over. "Pass the word, the 'Dogs' are back," they were saying, and why not? The Harvard baseball team had swept the doubleheader with the Midshipmen, 8-2 and 3-1, and did it with the true flair and ability of a defending league champion.
The 3-1 triumph in the nightcap was without question the Crimson's finest all-around diamond effort since the squad returned North last Sunday. Harvard played errorless baseball for the first time in four games and got a tremendous defensive effort from the infield of Rick Pearce, Burke St. John, Bobby Kelley, and Mark Bingham.
Tim Clifford fired his best outing of the year, as the senior raised his record to 2-1 with a seven-strikeout, six-hit job.
Clifford danced fastball with curve, and his control kept Navy batters baffled until the sixth, when the boys with the short hair strung together a single, a double, and a sacrifice for their only run.
Harvard scattered seven hits among seven starters, but the big blow was Mike Stenhouse's two-run triple down the rightfield line in the fifth to make it 3-0. Rick Pearce had previously squeezed Bingham home in the fourth for the first run.
The roles had been reversed in the first game--there was better hitting, but worse fielding. Luckily, though, the pitching was again invincible, as the unflappable Larry Brown moored Navy with eight strikeouts, while yielding but four hits and one earned run.
The Harvard bats, which had been much too passive in the first two Northern contests (Crimson batters had struck out a total of 19 times against UMass and Princeton, but 11 of those fannings came on called third strikes), went berserk in the sixth inning, as the hitters turned Pearl Harbor on the Horsehide and scored six runs to dispatch Navy's 1-0 lead.
A double to left by centerfielder Charlie Santos-Buch and back to back singles by Stenhouse and Bingham tied the game and forced Navy to bring in reliever Bob Gast, who gave up two walks and a Jim Peccerillo sacrifice liner, leaving with the bases loaded and the score 2-1.
Gast's replacement on the hill, freshman Bob Adrion, faired even worse. His first pitched sailed wild and allowed Bingham to score, and his next few pitches resulted in a sacrifice, a Joe Wark double, a two-base throwing error, and ultimately, a 6-1 deficit.
Brown had appeared unlucky at first (Navy's run came on a double that Santos-Buch caught, but which was inexcusably called a trap), but the sixth-inning outburst righted his confidence. Brownie gave up one hit and an unearned run in the last two frames, while three doubles (the Crimson had six two-baggers in the game) and a single gave the batsmen their two final runs.
THE NOTEBOOK: The unquestionable highlight of the weekend was the taped organ music played between innings at Navy's Bishop Stadium (which features the renowned Foster Memorial Scoreboard).
Bingham came up with a great crack between games of the doubleheader. "Those Navy guys are so competitive, one of them hits a grounder and it sounds like ten are running at you," he said.
The biggest athletic achievement of the Florida trip did not occur on the baseball diamond, I'm told. Seems that Brown bagged a 137-yd. hole-in-one on the par-three twelfth at the University of South Florida course. "I was a little upset, because I aimed for the right side of the cup and it went in the left," said Brown. E--See, Roberts, Wark, St. John, Stenhouse. SAC--Peccerillo. SB--Stenhouse. 2B--Santos-Buch, Stenhouse, Marshall, Peccerillo, Pearce, Wark, Mullikin. DP--Navy 1. E--Roberts, See. DP--Harvard 1, Navy 2. SAC--Pearce, McKee. 2B--Seiler. 3B--Stenhouse.
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