The Rams rallied for a pair in the sixth off Vail, who worked 7.1 innings and allowed two earned runs while striking out seven, to even the score at 2-2 and set up Carmack's moment of tribulation in the eighth.

With VCU's Kevin Elrod on first with one out, first baseman Jake Anthony stroked a hard liner to right field, which Carmack initially played to catch on the fly.

But as he neared the drive, Carmack changed his mind and slowed up to collect it on one hop, when his feet came out from under him, allowing the ball to roll away to the right-field wall, scoring Elrod with the eventual winning run.

"It was a tough ball to judge," Carmack said. "At first I thought I could get it. Then I had to hold up and slipped. Maybe I should have hung back a little more with a man at first. It cost us the game."

Although Carmack hit a one-out double in the ninth, Dubois stranded him, and Harvard was left with nothing to show for its cross-country plane trip.

"It was a good ballgame with two good pitchers going at it," Walsh said. "It was a disappointment because we have a better ball club than we showed. Our bats just didn't come through for us, but I think we showed some people out here that we belonged. This year we put together 31 kids who worked their butts off."

"It was an especially tough for the seniors to see our careers end that way," Vail said. "We had a 2-0 lead and a run scored on a line drive that took a bad hop."

Harvard had played solid league baseball all season, losing only four games, three of them to the league's top starters--first-teamer Chris Young of Princeton, Brown's Jim Johnson and Dartmouth's Conor Brooks.

Despite some adventurous wins, including a chaotic 18-16 extra-inning decision at Penn in the Ivy opener and a 15-12 slugfest in the opener of a pivotal series at Brown, the Crimson rolled as it has every year under Walsh. It clinched its fourth straight Red Rolfe Division title with a doubleheader sweep at Dartmouth on the last weekend of the season.

Ivy Player of the Year Andrew Huling led the attack, batting .384 on the season and .463 in Ivy play, with five home runs and 51 RBI. Huling switched from right field to center at the beginning of the season to fill the vacancy created by the graduation of Brian Ralph '98 and showed that Ralph's gigantic shoes were none too large.

During a four-game sweep of Yale at O'Donnell Field, Huling made three positively spectacular plays on top of a smattering of merely excellent ones, saving at least three runs. In Game 3, Huling scaled the center-field wall to heist a homer from Yale's Mike Kahney in the fifth inning of a game that took nine to produce a 7-6 Harvard win.

Huling also stole 14 bases and was consistently the squad's most heads-up baserunner.

Birtwell joined Huling on the MVP slate after going 4-1 with a 1.91 ERA and 42 strikeouts in 33 innings pitched. The sophomore showed that the flashes of brilliance he displayed while going 4-0 in 1998 were no fluke, as he dazzled opposing hitters with a Maddux-like arsenal of pitches, including a nasty two-seam fastball plus much-improved sliders and changeups. Opponents hit just .226 against him.

Senior second baseman Peter Woodfork and Binkowski stabilized the right side of the infield, as Woodfork hit .374 with 55 hits and 30 RBI, while Binkowski went .313 with three home runs and 31 RBI. He also showcased the leadership qualities and good baseball sense that could make him a favorite to materialize as captain next year.

Junior Jeff Bridich, who made the jump from JV ball after last season, made the most of his at-bats and scrapped a starting left field/designated hitter job, and hit .319 with three home runs and 23 RBI, good for Second-Team All-Ivy. Bridich showcased his power by blasting a home run over the Green Monster in a Beanpot semifinal loss to UMass, and his versatility by contributing at catcher and in left field.