Nine Faces Huskies Today; Navy Out of League Race

The Harvard baseball team, recovering in the wake of a nightmarish weekend where it lost three games and toppled from the Eastern League lead, received some good news yesterday as Navy split a pair with Yale to eliminate the Middies from the race.

Navy dropped the first game, a teninning affair, to the Elis, 2-1, giving them six losses in the League. The Cornell-Army game was rained out again yesterday and the teams will make up the games next Monday.

If Cornell wins two from the Cadets, they will play Navy in a make-up game sometime next week to decide if Cornell takes the Eastern League outright.

If Cornell loses two to Army, the Navy game will be unnecessary because Harvard will win the League title with five losses. Either way, Cornell must win two out of the last three games to tie Harvard for the lead and force a playoff for the title.

Harvard, meanwhile, will be occupied with Greater Boston League action, as the Crimson faces Northeastern today at Northeastern. A win would give Harvard a 5-0 record in the League and assure it the GBL title.

Northeastern should provide the breather that Harvard needs. The Huskies are struggling through a mediocre year and own a 7-9 record thus far.

"We haven't played a tough schedule either," Rick Stuart of the Northeastern sports information office said. "We did beat Bowdoin, 19-1, earlier this year if it makes any difference. But everybody has killed Bowdoin so it probably doesn't make any difference."

If Northeastern possesses any strength, it is in the mound staff. Sophomore lefthanders Rich Patchett and Rick Grimm are the aces. Patchett, although only 1-2 on the year, owns a 0.50 ERA and has struck out 23 batters in 37 innings. Grimm is 2-1 and had a no-hitter going for seven innings against Brown.

"Patchett and Grimm are pretty fair pitchers." Stuart said. "But neither should give Harvard any trouble."

John Wright leads the hitting attack with a 346 batting average. The big junior is also among the leaders in RBI's, with 11. Tom Rezzutti is hitting 316 and has been very strong defensively at his first base position. Mike Archambault, only a freshman, has wielded a good bat with a .289 average and also leads the team in RBI's, with 13.