But the truth is that this team would have been chosen even if it had lost its NCAA play-in series to Patriot League-champion Army and not gotten the chance to tally two victories in the tournament. The story of Harvard baseball this season begins, ends and middles with the Princeton Tigers.

Second-year coach Joe Walsh's first season at the helm was largely successful. Harvard finished 23-17, including an Ivy League-best 14-6.

The Crimson even entered the championship series on the heels of an 11-10 victory over UMass, avenging an earlier Beanpot loss. Remember this scenario: it will come up again.

The Tigers won the first two games of the best-of-three series. Harvard shot itself in the foot in the first game, committing four errors in a 15-6 loss. In the second game, sophomore Quinn Schafer, then a freshman, was bested in a 1-0 pitcher's duel.

The season was over, but not forgotten.

The 1997 Harvard baseball team proved early in the season that it was at least as good as last year's team. Harvard's celebrated spring break win over Miami was not the only wave the Crimson made in Florida, as it also topped Florida International and lost two close games to Stetson. It was a 5-6 road trip, but it should not have been that good.

"Even in the losses, we played hard," Albers said of the Florida trip. "The fact that we beat good teams down south proved to ourselves that we are a good team. Not only did we have the talent, but we could translate it into positive results."

Harvard's first six Ivy League games--two at Columbia, two more at Penn and two home games against Cornell--saw six victories. None of the wins were convincing, but such is the way of Walsh's team.

"We work hard all season to win close ballgames, because we're not a 'hit the ball out of the yard' type of club," Walsh said.

Harvard baseball under Walsh has always been based on a simple formula of solid defense, an aggressive running game and timely hitting. Harvard's offense this season was largely faceless, as each of the starting nine had several clutch performances throughout the course of the season.

"It got to a point in the Ivy League that we never thought we would lose," Albers said. "It wasn't a question of whether we were going to win, but who would come through in the clutch."

Indeed the list of All-Ivy players on this team--Ivy League Player of the Year Brian Ralph, Pitcher of the Year Frank Hogan, first baseman Peter Albers (first team), sophomore pitcher Andrew Duffell and sophomore right fielder Andrew Huling (second team) and junior designated hitter Brett Vankoski, sophomore pitcher Donald Jamieson and sophomore catcher Jason Keck (honorable mention)--is hardly distinguishable from some of the omissions.

The also-rans include sure-handed shortstop David Forst, .333-hitting left fielder Aaron Kessler and sophomore infielders Hal Carey and Peter Woodfork, each of whom ended the season on fire at the plate.

Ralph and Hogan, who received the most prestigious individual honors on the team, were each incarnations of a team philosophy. Ralph's routine run-saving catches in center were the backbone of his game just as defense was this team's constant; his team-leading 24 stolen bases came both from his own prodigious speed and Walsh's firm belief in the hit-and-run; his .390 average and unexpected pop at the plate (six HR and 36 RBI in 50 games) were Harvard's offense in a nutshell: you never knew where the big hits were going to come from.

Hogan was not the hardest thrower in the Ivy League, he did not have the league's nastiest curveball and he was never totally satisfied with his pitching performance. But in eight of his 10 decisions, Hogan came away with a "W." By no means overpowering, Hogan was a veteran who knew how to pitch and who knew how to get big outs when he needed them.