I know this is late, and Commencement seems long ago, but not looking back and analyzing the Harvard baseball team's performance of this season would be doing a tremendous injustice to one of the school's most remarkable and successful teams in what was surely a lukewarm year for Harvard sports.

Where do you start? Do you compare this season's record (22-7) with last year's (17-18), say "Bravo, guys!", and leave it at that? Do you talk about All Those Freshmen and a rebuilding period that was less than a season long? Do you hysterically point out that a ballclub that wasn't even listed in the New England Top 15 at the end of 1976 found itself rated number 3 in the circuit 12 months later?

These points are impressive and cannot be left out, but they really do not keynote the season past. Comparisons suggest change, and although records, ratings and attitudes did just that, the axis around which they revolve did not. The machine called Harvard Baseball had different parts in 1977, but the same man operating it.

Loyal Park, head coach of Harvard baseball, did not begin his 1977 season with the proverbial clean slate, "Let's forget about last year" feeling that coaches are usually allowed after a sub-par season. Park, who had finished his first below-.500 campaign in eight years as head coach, went into his ninth closely watched by critics who deemed it necessary to malign the man when his team failed to garner any post-season honors for the first time since Park succeeded Norm Shepard in 1968.

The man whose charges had won an unprecedented four straight Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League titles (1971-1974), as well as four District One baseball championships (1968, 1971, 1973 and 1974), and who had brought those four district champion teams to Omaha, Nebraska for the College World Series, was now suddenly deemed unfit to run the same Harvard diamond show.

Stories and letters were printed, accusing Park of racism, immaturity, back-stabbing and favoritism. Insinuations that Park should be fired, if not resign, abounded. And all because of a 17-18 season. Park looked at it all very philosophically.

"If I had started thinking about what had been written all the time I would never have been able to do my job. My job is to coach Harvard baseball and do it in the best way I know how. As long as I am doing what I feel in my heart is right I can live with anything that is said or written about me," Park said.

And Park did deal with it, not with pen or mouth but with performance, and his silent, business-like approach to off-season criticism was rousingly successful. Park truly "did his job" as he had always done it at Harvard; emphasizing speed, pitching and defense, and seasoning it with his natural enthusiasm. In his wake he left many embarassed critics as Harvard baseball returned to its accustomed spot in the limelight from a one-year sabbatical. As Park himself summed up the past spring: "In just one year we came right back to where we were in 1975. It's gonna be a privilege again to play baseball for Harvard."

Not that it wasn't this year. The feeling that last season was indeed water under the bullpen became apparent early, as Park took an astonishingly young ballclub down to Sanford, Florida to train in early April. Ten of Harvard's traveling ballplayers were freshmen, and the talented youths had forced Park to cut loose several members of the 1976 squad and carry only eight lettermen down to the sunshine.

Florida was "a time of development," according to Park, and the limited competition did not serve to test his babes. They romped in eight straight games down South, but moreover showed an intensity to perfect fundamentals and an attitude that was genuinely optimistic, a refreshing change from the cocky 1976 squad which had won 11 of 14 contests while in Florida. "I knew right after the Southern trip that these were the right kids," Park said.

The Greater Boston League opener on April 11 at Boston College came next, Park started six freshmen among them pitcher Ron Stewart, and bombarded the Chestnut Hillers, 12-2 for his team's ninth straight win. Stewart fanned 11 in the encounter as the young Harvard team proved itself very disrespectful to its elders.

Dominance by youth prevailed in the next three GBL tilts. One by one MIT (15-1). Tufts (13-4) and Northeastern (19-2) were soundly thwarted. All of a sudden, baseball was fun again.

The Crimson arrived for its home opener with a 12-0 record and met up with an awesome squad from Columbia, the defending champion of the Eastern League.

The fans, critics and allies alike were treated to a classic baseball game. Columbia, led by crafty hurler Rolando Acosta, defeated Harvard and Stewart, 3-1. Clutch hitting and run production were absent, but tenacity and confidence on the part of the Crimson were manifest. "We showed everyone what kind of a ballclub we were going to have," Park said. "The kids showed a ton of confidence here as they did all season long."

The third week of the season proved to test the Crimson as to just how far they had come back in a year. In 1976 the Harvard team had lost to Holy Cross by a gridiron margin of 21-4. This year, however, the Crusaders, even with the addition of basketball phenom Ronnie Perry at shortstop, did not find the going as easy. Perry made three errors at short and Holy Cross was held to only a field goal in a 9-3 Harvard win. A day later MIT was derailed for the second time, 10-0.