Baseball

In his second year at the helm of Dartmouth's baseball fortunes Coach Tony Lupien produced one of the strongest teams of recent years and one which came very close to winning the Eastern Inter-collegiate Baseball League title. The Big Green to date has thirteen victories and three losses. The defeats that hurt most came in a close, eleven-inning loss to Penn, 4-3, and another close 5-4 loss to Harvard, which were enough to cost the Indians the championship, which went to Harvard.

Since last month Dartmouth has swept to a 6-4 win over Holy Cross, pounded Williams 9-4 and Colgate 9-6, edged past Brown 6-5 in an eleven-inning game, out-slugged Cornell 11-4, lost to Penn 4-3, defeated Army 7-5, lost to Harvard 5-4, and thumped Brandeis, in the most recent encounter, 19-6.

The two factors which probably cost the Indians the league title were, first, a lack of pitching depth and, second, an inability to hit in the clutches. Dartmouth's power at the plate, in general, showed marked improvement with a team batting average of .251 to date. Five Dartmouth regulars are batting over .300, led by first baseman Ralph Manuel, with a 378 average. Shortstop Chuck Kaufman stands at .353, Captain and third baseman John Otis at .333, outfielder Dave Marshall at .324, and second baseman Dave Richards at .318. After these five, the averages drop down below .250, where catcher George Woodruff and outfielders Powell and Anderson are.

Southpaw Art Quirk carried the major part of the pitching load for the Indians this spring, winning eight games and losing one. He worked a total of 73 innings and compiled an amazing earned-run average of 2.11. Roger Hanlon, Dave Gavitt, Stan Drazen and Hank McCourt shared honors for the remaining games, with each receiving credit for one victory. Hanlon was given the loss for the Penn game.

The big game of the season was, of course, the Harvard clash with the league title at stake. Art Quirk was on the mound for the Indians, but ran into difficulty in the third inning when the Crimson, thanks to some timely hits and an untimely error, scored five runs to pull ahead. Quirk steadied down after this and yielded only six hits during the entire game, but the damage was done. The Indians got back three runs over the next four innings, then in the eighth inning catcher Woody Woodruff singled and went to third on a sacrifice. Dave Richards singled him home to make the score 5-4, but the Crimson held on at this point to win the game and the championship.