It was all over by the time Harvard's Mike Smerczynski got Mark Conley to tap to third and end the first inning. All over long before Ron Darling whiffed the first four Harvard batters he faced and set down the first 16 on one hit. All over so early that Yale's three second-inning runs were barely noticed by the Soldiers Field loyalists.
There is something about an 11-run first inning that destines the rest of a ball game for obscurity. The Yale baseball team punished three Crimson pitchers to the tune of seven hits and three walks, and the Harvard fielders chipped in with three errors to give Darling, the finest college pitcher in the East, an 11-run lead before he put toe to rubber. The Elis held on, of course, taking a 14-2 decision in the opener of yesterday's doubleheader and riding Joe Impagliazzo's four-hit pitching to seal the nightcap, 4-2. What began as a weekend of promise on Friday has, two rain-days and two losses later, turned into a nightmare for Harvard.
"If we'd come in and taken two, we'd have been in the driver's seat," left fielder Vinnie Martelli said after the twinbill. "Now we need a lot of luck to do it."
The losses drop the Crimson's Eastern League record back to 4-4. Yale is now 10-2, hard on the heels of Navy, which has only one loss. That means a lot of pounding to a lot of fine Eli and Middie pitching before Harvard has a chance.
And if Darling and Impagliazzo are this awesome the rest of the way, forget it. The former drew a dozen scouts to Cambridge, most equipped with speed guns that timed the junior's fastball consistently in the high 80s and once or twice in the 90s. What impressed them most was that this is how Darling looked with a 14-run lead, not exactly pressure conditions. He blew down the Crimson like candles on a birthday cake, fanning eight, allowing just two singles until he lost his concentration in the seventh. "Easily the best we've seen," said Martelli.
In the second game, Impagliazzo and Greg Brown hooked up in a pitchers' duel that settled in at 2-1. Yale, after both sides scored in the fourth. Neither team put together a rally again, but in the top of the seventh Yale got a two-out double from Darling--who is also on of the EIBL's finer hitters--and football star Rich Diana rode a Brown fast ball over the right-center field fence for a two-run shot. Impagliazzo set the Crimson down 1-2-3 to seal the sweep.
"I think we're the team to beat right now," said Darling, who rapped out three hits in eight trips on the day to raise his average into the 320s. "We've been getting hits from a lot of different people, and the way we're playing right now, we shouldn't lose again."
"We certainly didn't expect a laugher like that, but those things happen," he added. "They were never in the hallgame."
Actually, they were for a moment, because Crimson starter Bill Larson forced leadoff bitter Dan Costello to chop to third for one up, one down. Things fell apart just about then, however: a walk, single and walk loaded the bases, a two-base error brought two runs home and Yale was off and running. Then single, single, walk, single, double, single, two-base error, single and three-base error, and it was 11-0, with reliever Billy Doyle coming and going along the way.
Smerczynski got the same treatment in the second inning, and he soon departed to make it three Elis out, three Harvard pitchers in (and out) and 14 runs across with nobody retired in the second. In came John Sorich, who put out the fire and blanked the Bulldogs the rest of the way. "They hit the ball hard," said second-baseman Gaylord Lyman, "and where we weren't."
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