That being said, the Big Green baseball team's Ivy League opening road-trip this weekend is not a must-win situation.
If Dartmouth was to lose all four games to Columbia and Pennsylvania, the season would not be lost. Sure the Big Green would be 0-4, but with four games left against each Red Rolfe Division foe, they would still control their own destiny. So there is room for error.
But if Dartmouth can't get past the Lions and Quakers, who were mired in the cellar for most of last season, it's hard to believe that success will come against perennial powers such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
Against the lower teams in the league last season, Dartmouth went 6-2. However, against teams in the Ancient Eight with a winning record, the Big Green were a dismal 1-11. Without a fast start this weekend, 1999 could come and go within the span of three weeks.
The strange part of Dartmouth's Clark Griswold-esque Florida trip is that over the past few years, Dartmouth has been outstanding coming out of the gate.
In 1997, the Big Green rocketed out to the Ivy League with a school-record 16-game winning streak only to lose nine of their last 10 ballgames. Last season, Dartmouth pounded its opposition in Florida and came home with a stellar 10-1 record. Returning from Florida, they hit the Ivy League opening road trip like a pack of rabid dogs, looking to tear into fresh opponents.
When they returned from their opening visit to Cornell and Princeton though, they were 0-4 in league play and whimpering like poodles smacked on the nose. Each year, the Big Green faded down the stretch, becoming the Little and Littler Green with each game.
So now everybody is hoping that the squad's struggles in the early part of this season will bring about a reversal of fortune--a bad start but a strong Ivy League campaign.
Even though the Big Green lost All-American candidate Brian Nickerson '00 early in the season, every member of the team will tell you they were disappointed with last season's performance. For two years now, the Big Green have flirted with greatness, and it's about time the team found that elusive pick-up line to get a spot amongst the league's elite.
With a talent-laden lineup from top to bottom, merely winning is not enough. This is a team that should dominate bad teams, and they get a chance to prove that with this weekend's road-trip. Columbia and Penn are not bad teams, but if Dartmouth is going to show it's a better team than the one in Florida, they need at least three convincing wins. Anything short of three wins should be considered a sub-par performance.
Certainly former Big Green assistant coach Mik Aoki, the new manager at Columbia, won't be rolling out the welcome mats for Dartmouth this afternoon in New York. But this is a veteran squad that needs to win, and they need to win now.
The bats came alive in Tuesday's 18-5 pounding of Babson College and the confines of the Northeast seem to be more friendly than the fields of South Florida. Dartmouth hasn't brought home an Ivy title since 1987. It's time to play ball. At a higher level.
