Playing for pride. Being the spoiler. These are the subtle pleasures of a ball club that doesn't have much else to play for. The Penn baseball team (19-12, 5-7 Ivy) is such a squad, and it will play for pride while trying to spoil the slim title hopes of still-kicking Columbia (16-24, 8-8 Ivy) in a home-and-home series of doubleheaders this weekend. The Lions head into this weekend's contests against the Quakers with a respectable .500 record in the Ivy League, one good enough to have kept them alive in the race for the Lou Gehrig Division crown. But in order to take home at least a share of the hardware named in honor of that famous Columbia alumnus, the Lions must sweep Penn this weekend, and Princeton (11-5 Ivy) must drop three to Cornell. Considering Princeton's relative success in the Ancient Eight this year and Cornell's relative ineptitude, though, this is an extremely unlikely scenario. In any case, the Quakers aren't in any title hunt and are simply playing to try to win baseball games. "[We want] to finish up in decent form, basically," Penn baseball coach Bob Seddon said. "I would hope that we could finish up and win some games so that we don't look like we fell apart at the end of the season." To this end, Seddon will send juniors Dan Fitzgerald and Mike Mattern to the mound in Saturday's doubleheader in New York's bandbox Andy Coakley Field. Sophomores Andrew McCreery and Ben Krantz will pitch on Sunday when the two teams come to Philadelphia for a second doubleheader, beginning at noon. "Mattern hasn't pitched that badly, we just haven't given him any runs," Seddon said. "McCreery's pitched great... Columbia's going to have to hit to beat him." Seddon also wants the Quakers to get ahead of the Lions early in this weekend's games so that the Quakers can reestablish an aggressive quality on the basepaths. "One thing we've gotten away from is our running game, and the reason why is we're [often] behind [in games]," he said. "So we need to get ahead... You've got to play the percentage. You can't play for one run when you're down four." Whatever may occur, Penn believes it can keep pace with Columbia and ruin the Lions' Gehrig dreams. "They'll be competitive games," Seddon said.
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