Harvard Nine Beats Brown To Tie for Eastern Lead

Down 2-1 in the sixth inning, the Harvard baseball team, riding on the arm and bat of Bill Kelly, rallied for four runs in the late innings and coasted to a 5-2 victory yesterday over Brown at Soldiers' Field.

The win leaves the Crimson in a virtual tie with Cornell, Princeton, and Navy for the lead in the Eastern League race.

With Harvard trailing in the bottom of the sixth, Pete Bernhard led off the inning with a screaming liner that carried to the wall for two bases. After Hal Smith and Mike Thomas failed to move him along. Art Serrano sliced a single through the right side of the infield to score Bernhard and knot the score at 2-2.

When Kelly singled in the seventh, Vince McGugan sacrificed him to scoring position with a bunt. This set the stage for Dan DeMichele to single him across for the tie-breaker. Then, in the eighth, Kelly helped his own cause with a two-run single scoring Hal Smith and Pete Bernhard and icing the Crimson's 12th win in 14 outings.

The game had settled into a pitchers' duel through the first five innings. Kelly and the Bruins' hurler Bob Lukas matched each other on the mound, the only run being scored by Harvard in the fourth on a Pete Varney single and a two-bagger by Mike Thomas.

Brown, which had managed only three hits in the first five innings, put the tying run on in the sixth by virtue of a walk to Dean Hoag. Kelly, obviously trying to nurse the lead, delivered a belt-high, hanging changeup to outfielder Wayne Matthews, Matthews responded by sending the errant pitch into the Logan airport landing pattern and giving the Bruins their short-lived lead.

Regardless, Kelly pitched magnificent baseball. The senior nighthander turned in a near-flawless performance, striking out seven Brown batters and allowing only five hits overall.

"It's a wonderful feeling to know that you contributed something to a team like this." Kelly said. "I had better stuff in the Navy game but I had good control today and was backed up with some good defensive plays."

A dispute flared in the sever??h inning when Hoag sent a line shot into left-center. Everyone but plate umpire Bill Allard thought the ball bounced over the fence for a ground-rule double. Allard signaled home run which brought Harvard coach Loyal Park out of the dugout screaming. When the row died down. Hoag was on second base and the Bruins let victory slip away again.