Driscoll Pitches, Bats Harvard By Huskies, 3-1

It would have been like the South Vietnamese Army turning to recapture a few lost provinces. The often-routed Northeastern baseball brigade, which hasn't beaten Harvard since 1965, turned to fight yesterday afternoon on Soldiers Field and for six innings it looked as if the Huskies would win it.

But Harvard pitcher Don Driscoll belted a two-run homer in the seventh to give the Crimson a 2-1 lead, on the way to a 3-1 Greater Boston League (GBL) victory. Driscoll also pitched the full nine innings, scattering seven hits while fanning ten.

It was not your typical GBL contest; Harvard was hitting the ball, but always at somebody and the opposition didn't make a single error the entire contest. The only reminder that it was still a Greater Boston game was the fracas resulting after Driscoll's controversial circuit clout.

Home Run

With Barry Cronin on second after a double, Driscoll belted a Jim Walker pitch deep to left fielder Mark McHugh, who made a tremendous leaping catch of the ball as he crashed into the flimsy temporary fence (a four-foot high, wooden-slatted snow fence) that bounds the outfield. The Husky outfielder fell onto and collapsed the fence winding up on the other side.

McHugh doggedly came up throwing, but the home plate umpire was already waving his finger around over his head, indicating it was a home run. Northeastern coach Johm Connolly and his dugout protested loudly, but to no avail. The college rules state that if a fielder is carried out of the ballpark by his own momentum, it is a home run regardless if he catches it or not.

All that Connolly got out of his verbal battle with the umpires was a quick repair job of the entire fence by an agreeable Harvard squad and coach Loyal Park (who's probably agree to anything at that point as long as they kept the two runs on the scoreboard).

Driscoll's hit was only the fourth off Crimson bats on the afternoon, and only one of six hits that Walker allowed. The Northeastern starter would have earned a complete-game loss, but was lifted in the eighth after Leon Goetz doubled with two out and Cronin hit a hard chopper that alluded shortstop Joe Marani and went for an RBI single.

Marani was nearly the hero of the afternoon for the beleagured Northeastern battalion. The short shortstop tagged a Driscoll pitch in the fifth and lifted it out of the park for a 1-0 Husky lead. Up to that point Walker had allowed only a triple by catcher Dan Williams in the third and single by Leigh Hogan in the fourth, and Northeastern really wanted the win.

Unassisted Double Play

Driscoil, meanwhile, spaced the Husky hits out evenly, allowing one in each of the first four innings, and two (one, the homer by Marani) in the fifth. But after the fifth only two Huskies reached base, one on an error, who was later eradicated by an unassisted Hogan double play.

The senior Crimson righty struck out four in the final three innings and two of the last four batters, including pinch hitter Ron Wilson to end the game. Harvard is now 9-3 up North, 21-3 overall.

So for the moment anyway, the Bike Cup (symbolic of Greater Boston League dominance) is still safe in Harvard's hands, though Northeastern gets a rematch May 1 in front of their own outfield fences.