Batsmen Take Taming Act to Princeton

By the time you read this a sleepy Harvard baseball squad will have gathered at Dillon Field House at 7 a.m. on its way to Logan airport to catch the 8:45 plane to Newark. From there, they will bus to Princeton where both teams will open their Eastern League seasons at 3 p.m.

Probably the biggest surprise this afternoon is that Rob Alevizos will be taking the mound for the Crimson in this tilt. The junior goes into this season with only four innings of varsity experience, but appears to have mastered the slider and the result was a dazzling Florida trip that included two shutouts.

This will be the first Eastern League start and the first up north for "Zos," and the honor of opening the crucial portion of the schedule could understandably give even a grizzled veteran a case of the butterflies. Yet the righthander with the smooth delivery expressed no nervousness last night. "Maybe I'm crazy," he said, "but I'm just taking this one game at a time. I don't get too nervous about things."

Alevizos will be going against Tiger ace Mark Lockenmeyer and a Princeton team that hits like Tarzan but fields like Jane. The heaviest lumber is wielded by first baseman Vic Kurylak, holder of virtually every Princeton offensive record. Kurylak is a cinch to break his own record of six home runs in a season, having crashed five roundtrippers in his team's six games this season.

Kurylak's fireworks have not been enough to carry the rest of the Tigers, however, as their record now stands at 1-5. Their problems can be summed up by looking at Lockenmeyer's numbers from last year: 2-2 with a 0.33 ERA. He gave up a total of nine runs, only one of which was earned. The Princeton fielders made Throneberry look like a gazelle, and apparently the situation hasn't improved much this year.

Harvard's heavy hitters have also gotten off to a slow start in the run production categories, with first baseman Mark Bingham driving in five and record holder Mike Stenhouse notching only three RBI's.