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Baseball vs. Brown. Some softball too. Tom Grandieri Credit: Dan Getelman

If the Penn baseball team wants to race to the top of the Ivy League, it will first have to clear a Big Red roadblock.

Heading into the second-to-last Ivy weekend, the Quakers sit two games behind Gehrig Division leader Columbia.

But while Saturday and Sunday doubleheaders against a struggling Cornell team (8-14, 2-6 Ivy) will present Penn with a golden opportunity to make up ground, coach John Cole isn’t scoreboard watching just yet.

“You can’t look forward,” Cole said. “You’ve got to take care of your own business.”

The toughest task the Quakers (14-14, 4-4) face this weekend at Meiklejohn Stadium could be the biggest challenge they’ll face all season: Cornell pitcher Corey Pappel.

The junior — who is receiving attention from major league scouts — should take the mound for the Big Red during the series’ first game, according to Penn outfielder Tom Grandieri.

But Grandieri doesn’t seem to be sweating the idea of stepping into the box against a 6-foot-6 fireballer who boasts a 2.70 earned run average and 33 strikeouts this season — both statistics rank fifth in the league among pitchers who have thrown at least ten innings.

While the Quakers’ senior leader named game one as the key to the series, he also said he believes his team “can get three or four” wins out of the four-game series.

Maybe that’s because Grandieri took a look at the rest of the Big Red roster.

Cornell ranks seventh in the Ancient Eight with just 15 home runs on the year — a total matched by Penn’s top three hitters (Grandieri and juniors Will Davis and Dan Williams). And the Big Red’s pitching staff minus Pappel has compiled an ugly 7.19 ERA.

Yet Penn pitchers have struggled almost as much this season, especially recently. Eight Quakers pitchers combined to walk 13 La Salle batters during Wednesday’s game.

“For some reason, we’re not locating [our pitches],” Cole said. “We’re getting behind and then leaving balls up.”

Given Penn’s control issues, there could not be a better opponent coming to town than the Big Red, who have drawn just 51 walks in 2010, 40 fewer than the next-lowest Ivy total.

Grandieri, for one, has reason to believe the pitching will “come around.”

“We just need quicker innings, and less walks and just to attack the hitters a little bit more,” he said. “They work just as hard as [the hitters] do, so it’ll snap back into shape.”

If the Quakers can find some pitching to match their explosive offense that now leads the league in runs scored, an Ivy title could be in sight.

While the Red and Blue take on Cornell at home, Columbia squares off with third-place Princeton in two doubleheaders. If the two teams on top of the Gehrig Division take care of business, it’s going to be a wild final stretch in the Ivy League.

Next weekend, Penn plays the arch rival Tigers in a four-game series. It then wraps up the Ivy slate with a home-and-home doubleheader against the Lions, which may be for all the marbles.

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