A tie isn't like kissing your sister, it's like kissing your dog." --Harvard pitcher Ron Stewart
The big weekend has come and gone, and nothing is settled. By beating Army in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader, 10-5, after dropping the opener, 6-4, the Harvard baseball team finished its 1980 regular season tied for the EIBL title with Cornell--a situation that could be further complicated when Yale meets Penn on Tuesday.
The Crimson entered the day one game up on the Big Red thanks to a nifty, come-from-behind, 2-1 victory over Cornell's illustrious ace, Greg Myers Friday afternoon. Assuming Myers' mates would sweep Dartmouth (they did), Harvard needed at least a split to guarantee itself a tie for the crown.
It got the split, but like everything else all year, this team did it the hard way. Not content to rack the Cadets' inferior pitchers in the first game and then submit meekly to all-league twirler Craig Jones in the nightcap, the Crimson kept the good-sized Soldiers Field crowd around until the end, finally doing away with Jones using that rarest of of weapons in the Harvard arsenal, the longball.
Who's He?
In the opener, unheralded Stu Whitfield surrendered a tally when Mark Bingham single Bobby Kelley home with two outs in the first and then limited the Crimson to one hit until the sixth.
Harvard starter Ron Steward, who had come on to put out the fire and record a save in the ninth inning Friday, ran into trouble in the second and worked his way out only after three runs had scored on four singles and two walks.
Stewart was saved further embarrassment when Danny Skaff, who filled in admirably for injured captain Charlie Santos-Buch in center (three hits, flawless fielding) dove to his left to nab a sinking liner earmarked for extra bases.
The visitors continued to hit Stewart hard in the third. Left fielder Don Allard pulled off a perfect imitation of Skaff's catch to foil one drive, but Gary Donaldson hit one over everybody moments later and ended up on third base with a triple. A walk, stolen base and two-out single later, Army led, 5-1, and Bill Doyle had relieved Stewart on the mound.
Doyle held the Cadets to one run and three hits the rest of the way, but a three-run, sixth-inning Harvard rally, highlighted by Allard's two-run double, fell short.
Although it made no difference in the outcome, Army's final marker proved a costly one for the Crimson, as a collision at home plate on a delayed double steal tore ligaments in catcher Joe Wark's knee, sidelining him indefinitely.
The Young Set
Freshman Vinnie Martelli replaced Wark behind the plate in the nightcap, combining with hurler Bill Larson to form an all-Yardling battery, but it was the opposing pair, Army's junior receiver Dave Toth (3-6, four RBIs for the day) and sophomore pitching sensation Jones, that the half-dozen or so scouts lounging behind home plate had come to see.
When Jones took the mound, one member of the gallery of experts gleefully labelled him "the best in the East." But as the news of Cornell's first-game victory over Darthmouth diffused through the stands, the Crimson bats went to work.
Skaff opened the bottom of the first by lining Jones's second offering into right center for a two-bagger. Rick Pearce reached on an error, Skaff trotted home on Kelley's sacrifice fly, and then everyone trotted home when Bingham launched his second roundtripper of the campaign over the rightfield fence.
From then on, Jones toiled like just another pitcher, albeit a tired one (he had thrown 170 pitches Tuesday and 30 more the previous afternoon). Five fifth-inning runs on an error, single, hit-by-pitch, two-run double and finally a three-run homer by Martelli (his second) put Harvard in front, 8-3, and Doyle--who relieved Larson with one down in the sixth--completed the final 1 2/3 innings without incident to seal the split.
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