It’s been a rough month for Rob Wheeler.

The genial, 6’3 Minnesotan has a lot on his mind—and a lot of bench time to think about it.

He boasts a .300 average and one of the sweetest swings on the team. When he does get the call, Wheeler makes the most of it.

It’s May 1. After losing his job as the team’s consistent DH—he hasn’t started in 10 games over two weeks after a fast start early in the season—Wheeler finds himself starting in the seven-hole against Cape Cod League MVP Josh Faiola, a highly-touted fireballer from Dartmouth, in the Ivy season’s penultimate weekend.

Lucky guy.

Before his first at-bat, Wheeler ambles to the plate. Dartmouth’s traveling heckling crew, which made the trip from Hanover this morning, doesn’t recognize the 230-pound Harvard senior and takes a few half-hearted digs at his size.

Wheeler doesn’t quite look the ballplayer; the guy teammates call “Doggie” is large—but not overweight—and yet not in the imposing way that makes 210-pound teammate Josh Klimkiewicz such an intimidating presence when he steps to the plate.

And yet he punishes Faiola’s high fastball way over the bushes beyond left field for a towering home run. He finishes with a perfect 3-for-3 day at the plate and five RBI.

For the next two weeks, Wheeler will only make a few pinch-hitting appearances. In his last at-bat at Harvard’s O’Donnell Field on May 29, Wheeler strikes out.

“It would’ve felt better to go out a little better,” says Wheeler, whose disposition is content and whom Harvard coach Joe Walsh has called “the ultimate team player.”

“But I mean,” Wheeler adds, “we won, and we entered the regionals, and this is exactly how I would’ve hoped to end my career here.”

What Rob Wheeler accomplished on the field at Harvard in 2005—a sparkling .316 average, 13 RBI in just 57 at-bats during his senior season—makes up a small portion of his team impact, an impact that remains truly immeasurable.

“There are so many intangibles that he’s brought to us,” Walsh says of the charismatic senior. “You know? And he’s a character. And amongst everything, he loves the game. He just loves the game. You know, he’s chasing foul balls. He’ll get up and pinch-hit, and the first guy that goes in to replace him, he’s pulling for him.”

“You know,” Walsh adds, “you get a bunch of Rob Wheelers, and you’re going to win games.”

And still, no matter how much time Rob Wheeler devotes to the thoughts that roil within his mind, that time—for you, for me, for him, for anyone—remains inadequate.