A New Infield Fly Rule

Yesterday's Crimson heralded the arrival of the Fly-By lunch program on its front page. Upper-class students, who no longer have to schlep back and forth to the river for their noontime nourishment, were exuberant. Perhaps caught up in this unbridled enthusiasm, The Crimson lost its wits, portraying the sole beneficiaries of the bag lunches to be "time-pressed undergraduates." Undoubtedly, frantic pre-meds with five minutes to spare between orgo and B.S. reap the benefits of the program.

Supposing the majority of bag lunch folk to be hyper pre-meds, Harvard Dining Services (HDS) has assiduously removed all traces of caffeine from the meal, offering only milk, water, and orange juice for beverages. But HDS and The Crimson err in assuming that only manic undergrads indulge in bag lunches. There is another breed of student queuing up at Loker: the sports fan.

Rabid baseball fans have been especially prominent these last few days. With Boston's star-crossed franchise, the Red Sox, making its periodic (and usually pathetic) foray into the postseason, Mass. natives and those who have adopted the BoSox during their tenure in Cambridge gather in the T.V. room at Loker. Those in classes letting out at one had just enough time to select their 5 items, swipe their card, grab their condiments and moist towelette, and dash to the television in time for the 1:07 p.m. first pitch. Had the line been any less efficient, fans might have missed not only the first pitch but also Mo Vaughn's towering first inning opposite field home run on Tuesday.

Presumably, the Red Sox will fall short of the World Series as they have seemingly done for millennia. Will service be speedy enough when a vintage edition of Home Run Derby (e.g., Harmon Killebrew vs. Frank Robinson) is on ESPN instead of playoff baseball? Will Home Run Derby devotees (my roommate among them) be able to cope, knowing that Fly-By will not be fast enough for them to hear the habitual recounting of the rules at the very start of the broadcast. All we can do is hope that the Red Sox go all the way and delay consideration of such ponderous matters.