Princeton At Harvard Times Four

Peter Farrell is trying way too hard to convince TigerBlog that he's an actual New York Mets fan.

TB believes that Farrell, the women's track and field coach, was a Mets fan in the 1960s through the 1980s. It's just that it's interesting to TB that Farrell's love for the Mets ironically has resurfaced in 2015.

He was at it again yesterday, when he came in to TB's office with yet another piece of Mets apparel, which he no doubt had to dig out of a drawer somewhere.

Of course, if you're TigerBlog's age and older and grew up watching the Mets on Channel 9, then you remember who one of the main sponsors was. And it wasn't Dunkin' Donuts, which was on the back of Peter's shirt.

No. It was Rheingold beer. Peter sang the jingle yesterday in TB's office.

He also talked about how he taunted Senior Associate Director of Athletics, who is an Illinois native and a genuine Cubs fan. Her team got unceremoniously swept by the Mets in the National League Championship Series. TB read that the Cubs were the first team ever in a best-of-seven baseball playoff series to never have the lead at any point.

TigerBlog, being kind, told Allison that he would be the only person around here not to mention the Cubs to her.

Peter? He made a few Mets-centric comments to her. And he asked her about the absurdity of the rule that a ball that disappears in the Wrigley Field ivy is a ground-rule double.

And her response? It was perfect:

"Peter, you need to know the Ivy rules."

The Mets will play either the Royals or the Blue Jays in the World Series. Kansas City leads 3-2, with the last two games in KC. TigerBlog is rooting for the Royals, because of Chris Young.

TigerBlog read a great story on Chris in the Kansas City Star the other day, written by Andy McCollough, the beat writer for the paper. Andy used to work for the Star-Ledger and covered some Princeton stuff way back when.

You can read the story HERE.

Speaking of stories about Princeton teams, here's a really good one on the sprint football team from SB Nation. Well, HERE is where it actually is.

That's 10,000 words on Princeton sprint football. What is there to say about sprint football for that long? Read it for yourself.

That reminds TB of when he used to work at the newspaper with a guy named Ray Clark. One day TB heard Ray on the phone with someone who didn't like a story he'd written. He couldn't hear what the person on the other end was saying to Ray, but it was obvious Ray was getting annoyed. Finally, he let loose with the perfect comeback: Who read it to you?

The sprint football team has two games left, next week against Penn and the week after against Chestnut Hill. The Ivy League Heps cross country championships are also next week, as is the Capital City Classic for men's hockey at the Sun Bank Center.

That hardly means this isn't a huge weekend for Princeton, and most of it is in Cambridge.

The biggest game is the women's soccer showdown at Harvard. Princeton is 4-0-0, and Harvard is 4-0-0. Princeton probably has the tougher schedule the rest of the way after this one, but the winner of this one is in really good shape to snag the Ivy's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The 2014 Princeton-Harvard women's soccer game was a wild one, which finally ended at 5-4 Crimson.

The field hockey team is also at Harvard.

Princeton is the lone unbeaten in the league at 4-0. Cornell and Penn are both 3-1. They also happen to be Princeton's last two league opponents.

Harvard is 2-2, as is Columbia.

There have been 16 Ivy League field hockey games to date this season. Of those 16, there have been 10 one-goal games, of which six have gone to overtime.

The men's soccer team is 0-2-1 in the league. A year ago, Princeton went 4-2-1 and got a share of the championship, so anything is still possible.

It's been a frustrating start to the Ivy season for the Tigers, who are 6-2-1 out of the league against a good schedule. Princeton can get rid of a bunch of that frustration Saturday, also at Harvard, who is 3-0-0 in the league, as is Dartmouth.

Lastly, the football team is at Harvard as well. As in men's soccer, the two unbeatens in Ivy football are Harvard and Dartmouth, who meet a week from today in Cambridge as well.

Princeton, Brown, Yale and Penn are all 1-1. The Tigers had been 4-0 before a 38-31 setback to Brown in Providence last weekend.

The math is obvious.

The weather in Cambridge tomorrow is supposed to be 55 and sunny, with zero chance of rain. That's a big-time forecast for what figures to be a big-time day.