Harvard Crimson baseball
The Harvard Crimson baseball team is the varsity intercollegiate baseball team of Harvard University, located in Boston, Massachusetts. The program has been a member of the Ivy League since the conference officially began sponsoring baseball at the start of the 1993 season. The team plays at Joseph J. O'Donnell Field, located across the Charles River from Harvard's main campus. Bill Decker has been the program's head coach since the 2013 season.
The program has appeared in four College World Series and 14 NCAA tournaments. It has won five Ivy League Championship Series, eight Rolfe Division titles, 15 EIBL regular season titles, and 12 Ivy League regular season titles. In 2019, the team won its first Ivy League title since 2005 when they defeated Columbia in the Ivy League Playoff Series.
As of the start of the 2014 Major League Baseball season, 12 former Crimson players have appeared in Major League Baseball.
History
19th century
Harvard College's first season of baseball came in 1865; the team went 6–0 that year. It played one intercollegiate game and five against semi-professional teams. Organized baseball at the college had begun a few years earlier, when "class nines" were first fielded; the first of these was the '66 Baseball Club, formed in 1862 by members of that year's freshman class. Despite these early years of competition, 1865 was the school's first varsity intercollegiate season.file:Jim tyng baseball card old judge.JPG|thumb|150px|Catcher Jim Tyng displayed on a cigarette card
Along with rowing, baseball was popular at Harvard in the late 19th century. A newspaper review of the 1871 book Four Years at Yale says that the book includes "interesting accounts of the sports common in colleges, especially baseball and rowing, and the principal matches which have taken place between Harvard and Yale." An 1884 edition of the Washington Bee reprinted a Lowell Courier humor section piece that reads, "Sixty Harvard freshman have dropped their Latin, eighty their Greek and 100 their mathematics. None of them have dropped their baseball or their boating, however, and college culture is still safe."
In a game against a semi-professional team from Lynn on April 12, 1877, Harvard catcher Jim Tyng became the first baseball player to use a catcher's mask. The mask was invented by another student, Frederick Thayer, and manufactured by a Cambridge tinsmith. Tyng later became the first Harvard player to appear in Major League Baseball when he played in a September 23, 1879, game for the Boston Red Caps.
In the 1870s and 1880s, Harvard was a member of two loosely organized forerunners of the Ivy League. The Intercollegiate Base Ball Association, which it played in from 1879 to 1886, included Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, and Amherst. The College Baseball League, which it played in from 1887 to 1889, featured Yale, Princeton, and Columbia.
The school continued to field a varsity baseball team through the end of the 19th century. It played both fall and spring regular season games in its early years, but moved to a spring-only schedule after the 1885–1886 season. The program's highest 19th-century win total was 34, a mark it reached in both 1870 and 1892. Through the end of the 1899 season, the program played without a head coach and was instead led by its captains.
Two important changes to the program occurred near the end of the 19th century– at the start of the 1898 season, Harvard began playing home games at Soldier's Field, and at the start of the 1900 season, it hired E. H. Nichols as its first head coach.
Pre-World War II
The program went.500 or better in 15 of the 17 seasons from 1900 to 1916. Its highest win total in that stretch, 23, came in 1915 under head coach Percy Haughton. Two head coaches served four-season tenures during the time period. Louis Pieper coached from 1907 to 1910; the program's two losing records in this time period came under him. Frank Sexton also coached for four seasons ; the program had a winning record in each.In the early 20th century, Harvard held tryouts, usually in the spring, to select the members of the team from the student body. To start the regular season, the team often traveled to the Southern United States to play games in warm weather, a practice that began in 1898. Up until the start of World War I, its scheduled included professional and semi-professional teams, in addition to collegiate teams.
Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young, then a member of the Boston Americans, served as the team's pitching coach for a brief time in 1902. Another future Hall of Famer, Willie Keeler of the Brooklyn Superbas, served alongside Young as the team's hitting coach.
William Clarence Matthews was Harvard's shortstop from 1902 to 1905. Matthews was black. A handful of black students graduated from Harvard around that time, but Matthews one of only a few black players in major college athletics during an era in which baseball was divided by the color line. Harvard went 75–18 during Matthews's career. As a freshman, he scored the winning run in Harvard's 6–5 win in the decisive game of the Yale series; he also led the team in batting average as a sophomore, junior, and senior. Matthews faced racial discrimination while a member of the team. During his freshman season, he was held out of games against Navy and Virginia due to their objections to Harvard's fielding a black player. In 1903, the following year, Harvard canceled its annual southern trip when it faced similar objections. After Harvard, Matthews played one season of professional baseball and went on to a career in law. The trophy given to the Ivy League's baseball champion is named for Matthews. He was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.
The 1917 season was canceled because of World War I, but the program resumed play in 1918. Through the 1932 season, the program competed as an independent school. For the 1933 season, however, Harvard joined the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League, which had been formed by several Ivy League schools for the start of the 1930 season.
Prior to the start of the 1926 season, Fred Mitchell was hired for his second stint as Harvard head baseball coach. Mitchell's second stint lasted until 1938– Harvard's final four seasons as an independent and first six in the EIBL. Under Mitchell, Harvard won its first EIBL title; with an 8–4 league record in 1936, it tied Dartmouth for the championship. Mitchell was replaced by Floyd Stahl. In Stahl's first season, Harvard won its second EIBL title, finishing with a 9–3 league record.
Because of World War II, Harvard competed as an independent in 1943 and 1946 and did not sponsor a team in 1944 or 1945.
Post-World War II
EIBL
Harvard rejoined the EIBL for the 1947 season. For the 1948 season, Brown joined the seven other Ivy League schools in the league; Army and Navy also joined, giving the league 10 members. In the immediate postwar years, under head coaches Adolph Samborski and Stuffy McInnis, the program finished no higher than 4th in the EIBL.Norman Shepard became the program's head coach for the start of the 1955 season. Under Shepard, Harvard won four EIBL titles, going undefeated in league play in 1958 and 1964. In 1968, Shepard's final season, the team qualified for its first NCAA tournament. In order for Harvard to play in the tournament, Shepard threatened to speed up his retirement if the NCAA did not reschedule the District 1 Regional to avoid a conflict with Harvard's final exams. His threat succeeded, and Harvard won the rescheduled District 1 Regional, defeating Boston University once and Connecticut twice to advance to the College World Series. There, it lost its opening game to St. John's, 2–0, and an elimination game to Southern Illinois, 2–1.
Loyal K. Park was hired as head coach prior to the start of the 1969 season. After finishing tied for 5th and tied for 2nd in the EIBL in his first two seasons, the program had its most successful four-year stretch from 1971 to 1974. Harvard won four consecutive EIBL titles and played in three College World Series. In 1971, Harvard won the EIBL outright and swept Massachusetts in a best-of-three District 1 Regional. In the College World Series, Harvard defeated BYU, 4–1, in its opening game, but was eliminated by consecutive one-run losses to Tulsa and Texas–Pan American. In 1972, Harvard tied Cornell for the EIBL title, but won a playoff to advance to that year's NCAA tournament. There, it advanced to the District 1 Regional finals, but lost to Connecticut, 11–2. In 1973, the program won the EIBL outright and went undefeated in the District 1 Regional to advance to the College World Series. There, it lost consecutive games to Southern California and Georgia Southern. In 1974, Harvard defeated Princeton in an EIBL tiebreaker playoff and won the District 1 Regional, but lost consecutive games to Miami and Northern Colorado at the 1974 College World Series. Park coached through the end of the 1978 season, in which Harvard won the EIBL and played in the NCAA tournament.
Alex Nahigian replaced Park and was the program's head coach from 1979 to 1990. Nahigian had been the head coach at Providence from 1960 to 1978. Under Nahigian, Harvard appeared in three NCAA tournaments. In both 1980 and 1983, it advanced to the Northeast Regional final, but lost there to St. John's in 1980 and Maine in 1983. During Nahigian's 12-year tenure, Harvard's overall record was 249–152–3.
During the successful years under Shepard, Park, and Nahigian, many Crimson players distinguished themselves individually. The era from 1955–1990 saw 17 First-Team All-America selections and 31 Major League Baseball draft selections. Paul del Rossi, a pitcher under Shepard from 1962 to 1964, set the EIBL/Ivy career record for wins, with 30. Future Major Leaguer Mike Stenhouse, who played for Park and Nahigian from 1977 to 1979, set single-season and career EIBL/Ivy batting average records, was twice named a First-Team All-American, and was a first-round draft pick of the Oakland Athletics in 1979. Another future Major Leaguer, Jeff Musselman, was the 1985 EIBL Pitcher of the Year.