Ulysses J.

THE only thing gray about Tony Lupien is the flannel uniform he wears when his Dartmouth baseball team plays away from Red Rolfe Field.

There is nothing gray about Lupien, the man. His views on people, events, and issues rarely (make that never) leave room for question. You know where he stands, like it or not, and that's his trademark. He was that way long before he became Dartmouth's baseball coach in 1957 and now, in his 20th season, he hasn't changed a bit.

From his undergraduate days at Harvard, where he was captain of both baseball and basketball (he also quarterbacked the freshman football team), through nearly 15 years in professional baseball as a player and manager, to 25 years in coaching and business (he has concurrently been an investment broker during his years at Dartmouth), Lupien also has come to be regarded as the source of wisdom and counsel for the men who have played for him and worked with him.

His name is Ulysses John Lupien. He was Lupe until he arrived in Scranton, Pennsylvania, fresh out of Harvard in 1939, a first baseman on a Boston Red Sox farm team that had a trio of Italians, all named Tony, at the other infield positions. That's when the Frenchman from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, became "Tony." He really had no choice.

He is, above all else, a professional, and his approach to'his players has been to teach the game of baseball as it is played and lived by the professionals. There is probably no greater educational experience in four years of life at Dartmouth than the one his players discover during two weeks of spring vacation spent in Virginia and the Carolinas, playing every day, living out of a suitcase, and covering nearly 2,000 miles on a bus. It's life in the minors and you learn a lot about yourself in the process.

Anyone who thinks baseball is a slow game, lacking flair and finesse, should watch Lupien teach the subtle side of the game. Watch a handful of pitchers and infielders clustered about him at the mound, learning the intricacies and teamwork that are fundamental to a pickoff play, the cutoff from the outfield, or covering the bunt, and you understand why Carroll Brewster ranked him with the great teachers at Dartmouth.

Baseball, to Tony Lupien, is the classic sport. It's me and you, pitcher and batter, fielder and base runner. You make the play - there's no one to do it for you, no place to hide.

ft is all things to each player, teamwork and self-reliance, and the game is played best when concentration is blended with relaxation. "Do the best you can" is all he asks, and if you can laugh in the process, you've discovered what it's all about.

There are some who would say that Lupien is too old-fashioned, an inflexible traditionalist. They're the "do-your-own-thing" ilk, and they can't envision that he wants his team, as representatives of Dartmouth, to look as sharp as he hopes they will play. It's simply a measure of the discipline that he exacts on the field. Off the field, on the road, it's the same. Sounds tough? Not really, when you realize that there are few teams at Dartmouth, or anywhere else, that are so close-knit as his.

Lupien is virtually unique among coaches in that he won't recruit, taking the best (by his measured eye) of those who appear for three weeks of fall practice. He's traditional to the point that he's not enamored with the transience that has developed under the Dartmouth Plan, but he's realistic in recognizing that it's a fact and if his shortstop wants to spend spring term studying in France, that's where he's going to spend spring term.

". . . do the best you can (with what you've got)" has, over the years, involved some very good players who have come his way and produced 296 wins (240 losses and 2 ties) in 19 seasons of learning from Lupe. The most conspicuous of those seasons was in 1970 when Chuck Seelbach and Pete Broberg (both later major leaguers) were the big pitchers on a team that was 24-10, won 21 straight games, and finished fifth in the NCAA World Series.

The stories about Lupien, the players, and friends who have been a part of his baseball experience during 20 years at Dartmouth (and long before that) border on the infinite. He made sounds once about writing a book but discarded the notion on the grounds that it wouldn't sell. Maybe it wouldn't, and maybe the stories are best kept within the circle of those who have lived them. The nice thing is that they are relived with regularity by the players (past and present), professors, and neighbors who convene at the end of practice in the upstairs "office" at Davis Varsity House (a room that Clarence Jellis once called home and that Lupe shared for years with Doggie Julian, whom he assisted for a dozen years as freshman basketball coach).

If not in Davis, they convene on the stone porch of the pre-1800 house in Norwich that he and his wife Millie bought along with a hillside view of the Vermont countryside in 1963 (". . . and have been restoring every since," says she). The tales of characters and places abound, and as Lupien closes in on 60 it's obvious only to those who have known him for a long time that he's slowed down just a bit.

Perhaps he's even mellowed from the evening eight years ago when he pronounced over dinner that there were a couple of people he had little use for and one of them was a sports publicist. The dinner survived and so, I think, has the relationship. At least he still lets me borrow his splitting hammer, and he's ready with an answer to virtually any problem, large or small. Like the weekend in January when a Dartmouth hockey player tore the rivets from the toe of his skate. It was Saturday morning and there was a game that night. Try Lupe. He'll know who can fix it. The skate was repaired that afternoon by a friend of a friend who repairs harnesses.

The patriarch of Dartmouth's coaches is, above all else, a friend. Tough, not much for bending, but ready to do the best he can. If some of it rubs off you'll be better for it and realize why so many Dartmouth men appreciate the Harvard man who came to Hanover 20 years ago.

In his 20 th season Tony Lupien's grizzled phiz looms large in the Dartmouth dugout.