Nine Nips Lions, 10-9; Bows to Army

With an outburst of base hits, the Harvard baseball team shouldered its way past Columbia 10-9 on Friday, but Army's Mac Hayes slapped the lid back on the Crimson offense the next day, pitching the Cadets to a 7-1 win.

The Columbia game was spattered with errors, walks, hit batsmen, and plenty of water. Rain interrupted the contest twice as Harvard built up 4-1 and 8-3 leads and blow them. But a pair of neat squeeze plays in the seventh finally broke an 8-8 tie, as well as Columbia's six-game winning streak.

Harvard had loaded the bases with one but when John Dockery caught the Lion defense off balance with a perfect bunt. Neil Houston scored easily from third and Columbia pitcher George Bunting left holding the ball when no one bothered to cover first. Jeff Grate repeated the maneuver, with Joe O'Donnell barrelling in from third.

In the ninth, the Lions scored a run off Thornton, Harvard's third pitcher, and had the tying run on third with two out. But Coach Norm Shepard called on sophomore Tom Munzel, who blazed three fastballs past pinch hitter John Burns to end the game.

Columbia got a quick run in the first Crimson starter Jim McCandlish, but two walks and singles by Jim Tobin and Dan Hotstein accounted for a pair of Harvard runs in the bottom of the inning. Houston bashed a home run to dead center in the third with George Neville on base to give the Crimson a three-run load. The Lions knocked McCandlish out with two runs in the fourth, encouraging Columbia bench jockeys to ride selected Harvard players enthusiastically. Bob Welz's triple, Neville's double and Houston's single off the third baseman's glove in the next inning quickly shut up the loudmouths. The third baseman then booted O'Donnell's grounder, allowing Houston to score. Two more errors on Dockery's ground ball to third let in the third and fourth runs of the inning, giving Harvard an 8-3 lead.

Bob Boston, Columbia's 6' 6" first baseman, clouted a bases loaded triple in a five-run seventh inning that tied the score. The rally was entirely at the expense of relief pitcher Jim Sersich, who nevertheless got the win when Harvard scored its final runs in the bottom of the inning.

The Crimson hitters didn't find Hayes such an easy mark. The cadet senior allowed only four hits, and not until the fifth inning. Hayes struck out 13 men as he continued the domination of Army pitching over Harvard hitting -- the Crimson's single run was only their second against the Cadets in three years.

Harvard starter Bob Lincoln matched Hayes pitch for pitch until the sixth inning, when Army's powerful Ken Smith virtually finished the game with a single swing. With men on first and second, the Cadet shortstop lofted an opposite field home run over Hootstein's head in right. Those three runs were considerably more than Hayes needed.

In the eighth, the tiring Lincoln loaded the bases on two walks and a hit batsman. He might have escaped the inning unbloodied if he and Welz hadn't played no sir please, after you with a two-out popup. The ball dropped, a run scored, and basketball star Mike Silliman followed with a single that drove in two more. Hayes' triple and a squeeze play scored Army's final run in the ninth.

Harvard did manage to avert a shutout in the bottom of the ninth. Hootstein and Welz hit successive singles up the middle, and Hootstein scored from third on Neville's ground out.