Baseball to face Lions in four key Gehrig games

If the baseball team is on an amusement park ride, it's been a smooth one for the most part, more appropriate for Disneyland than as a main attraction at Six Flags or Cedar Point. Princeton has done more than just survive the trip so far, leading the Ivy League's Gehrig Division with a 5-3 record.

But this rollercoaster is slightly deranged, with the biggest hill right smack in the middle of the ride. This weekend, well before the Rolfe-Gehrig Championship series, the Tigers face what could be the climax of their regular season — a four-game series against Columbia, the team rivaling Princeton for first place in the Gehrig Division.

Columbia has been on a roller coaster of its own. After starting the Ivy League season by dropping the first game of a doubleheader against Harvard, the Lions recovered to claim the second game, kicking off a six game winning streak. The victims of this streak included Harvard and Long Island University. Dartmouth and Yale had the misfortune of encountering the blood-thirsty Lions twice each in this period, and both teams left with the scars to prove it.

Brown put a stop to Columbia's pillage of the Ivy League, defeating the Lions 9-6 and 13-12 in a deflating doubleheader. But this was hardly surprising. The almost flawless Bears have now accumulated a 5-1 Ivy League record and are heads above the rest of the Rolfe Division, so it could be considered impressive that Columbia was able to keep the games so close.

Except for one thing. Brown's lone league loss wasn't to just anybody — it was to Princeton.

So maybe Columbia's rollercoaster is headed downhill.

The Lions did manage to rebound earlier this week against Lafayette with a 6-5 win.

Despite Princeton's impressive win over Brown, the teams' records hardly make a weekend sweep of Columbia a fait accompli.

Princeton has split doubleheaders with Yale, Brown and Harvard so far. The Lions also split with Harvard, but were able to take both the games against Yale. Two weekends ago, the Tigers finally succeeded in claiming both games of a doubleheader when they swept a very respectable Dartmouth (4-4 Ivy League).

So statistically, with both teams holding 5-3 records, the two teams appear dead-even. With neither team being obviously superior, it is anybody's guess what direction the ride is taking. Further complicating predictions is the fact that it is a hazard even to guess which factor will be the deciding ones.

"I think the key to this weekend will be defense," said head coach Scott Bradley. "Our field is wet and slow and I believe that hits will be hard to come by."

"We're focused on hitting," sophomore pitcher Ryan Quillian said.

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"Our team does well when [Max] Krance and [Andrew] Hanson, our third and fourth batters, do well," agreed sophomore pitcher Scott Hindman. "That sparks the rest of the team."

The game has come at an opportune time for the Tigers, who have recently experienced "timely pitching and hitting," according to junior pitcher Tom Rowland.

Regardless of which team triumphs or how they do it, the series — which begins today at 1 p.m. at Clarke Field — will certainly carry repercussions throughout the season.

"We basically have control of our own destiny in the Gehrig Division," Rowland said. "It's good to have played well against the other division so we don't have to just wait for someone to lose [in ours]."

As the two teams gain momentum, heading toward the apex of the biggest hill of the regular season, Tiger baseball fans hope that it is the Columbia team which comes down screaming while the Tigers coast in the front seat with their hands up.