A Golden Arm? Young Crimson Fireballer Looking for a Chance in the Major Leagues

When the Harvard baseball team took the field this spring, all the talk around the league centered on the Crimson's hitting.

This, after all, was the team that batted a collective .351 in 1991 and returned all but two of its starters.

But as Red Sox faithful know, it takes more than hitting to win games. It takes quality pitching.

And the crimson looked to lefthander Sean Johnston.

Johnston answered the call, turning in the finest season of his Harvard career. The Kirkland senior went 4-2 this season, recording 61 strikeouts while posting a 3.10 earned-run-average.

"It's the best season I've pitched since I was here." Johnston says. "I felt pretty good and the guys supported me well this year."

For his performance, the pitcher earned an All-EIBL Honorable Mention and his teammates elected him co-MVP along with junior centerfielder Juan Zarate.

"The award that means the most to me is the MVP because it's something your teammates vote on," Johnston says. "Twenty years form now, you're not going to care about what you've got on your trophy shelf so much as knowing your teammates respected you and you respected them."

Johnston was the model of consistency this year on a Crimson squad that often was not. Though Harvard occassionally suffered from erratic batting, Johnston time and again came through with key wins and strike outs.

"I didn't have a lot of spectacular games, but I just went out and did the same thing game after game, which is what you strive for," Johnston says. "you try to be consistent. You don't want highs and lows."

Johnston's success stems from both mental and physical preparation. During the winter, Johnston worked out extensively with second-baseman Jim Mrowka and first-baseman Dan Scanlan (his roommates), lifting weights and running approximately three a day, five times a week.

When the season began, he carefully focused on the job at hand.

"I like to think about what I'm doing," Johnston says. "I pitch on Saturday, an then on Sunday we're playing other games and I'm not thinking about anything.

"But once Monday comes, the only thing that's on my mind is next Saturday. The minute I wake up I'm thinking about the game and what we have to do as a team to win it," he continues.

Johnston, of course, has a philosophy on pitching that can be easily summed up: Pitch to your strength.

"Guys get caught up in pitching to a hitter's weakness if they find out he can't hit a certain pitch," the hurler says. "But if you can't throw the pitch well that he can't hit, then I think you're wasting your time trying to throw it."

Johnston adds that this policy does not mean neglecting a hitter's weakness altogether.

"If you're up 0-2 in the count, throw an outside pitch," he advises. "If you miss outside, it's not a big deal. But I don't like to go after a guy's weakness a lot if it's not the pitch I'm comfortable thowing on a given day."

The Berlin, Conn.-native says he "started to become the pitcher he wanted to become" during his senior year at Berlin High School. After seriously working out for the first time in the off-season, he returned to make the all-state team.

But things haven't always gone smoothly. During his sophomore year at Harvard, Johston experienced "possibly the worst baseball day" of his life.

In the last inning of the first game of a doubleheader against Boston College, Johnston was called upon to work the Crimson out of a bases loaded jam.

He gave up a grand slam.

Then Johnston, the scheduled starter, had to take the mound in the second game.

The first pitch he threw resulted in a freak line drive off the elbow of his pitching arm. Johnston was sidelined for three weeks.

"Those were two of the successive worst pitches I've ever thrown in my life," Johnston remembers.

The senior can joke about the incident now, but the comeback trail was long. It included a rocky junior year when he went 1-6, despite a respectable 3.31 ERA.

Last summer, Johnston participated in the Great Lakes League, an organization jointly funded by the NCAA and Major League Baseball for amateur talent.

He shone, going 5-3 and starting the All-Star game. He also led his team, the Columbus, Ohio All-Americans, to the championship game an recorded the win, 7-6.

"That was one of the best baseball experiences I've ever had," Johnston says.

Now that his Harvard years are over, Johnston is looking toward the major.

His best pitches, the fastball and the splitfingered fastball, have been clocked as high as 88 miles per hour, and the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox have shown an interest in him.

"It would hurt a little bit to spend this much time working at it and not get a chance to play pro-ball," Johnston says.

"Dan, Jim, [left-fielder] Nick [DelVecchio] and I all feel the same way. Those guys were down there taking batting practice on their own all year long," the pitcher says. "For any of the four of us not to get a shot would be kind of heartbreaking."