LITTLEST WINNER

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In this jejune January your baseball trivia quiz provided a hopeful harbinger of spring. I therefore waited eagerly for the quiz's omniscient propounder to provide the answer to the one query I couldn't cope with. Thus, you can imagine the crisis of faith I have been subjected to since discovering that Mr. Powers knows no more than I the identity of the youngest pitcher to win a major-league game.

Now, of course, even the most casual initiate into the mysteries of baseball knows that Joe Nuxhall was the youngest pitcher to appear in a major league game, but, Harvard sports tradition to the contrary, a mere appearance in a game does not constitute a win. The sorry fact is that in his premature debut with the Reds in 1944 at the age of 15, Nuxhall established a firm precedent for such successors as George Plimpton by undergoing a merciless pounding from the then as now champion Cardinals. He did not again appear on the major league scene until 1951, when he won his first game at the ripe old age of 22. So please, Mr. Powers, say it ain't Joe. Now that you have tested us and we have been found not altogether wanting, vouchsafe unto us the correct answer. Michael Greenwald