“He’s got a great arm, great velocity,” Walsh said. “He’s gonna be a great strikeout guy for us.”

The Crimson will need whatever it can get from Wahlberg next season with Birtwell and possibly junior Ben Crockett leaving. Yesterday’s affair will go a long way toward giving Wahlberg the confidence to make it happen.

The sun still shines for senior left fielder Joe Llanes. Llanes very quietly lived one of the best stories to hit Harvard athletics in several years-a successful recovery from testicular cancer. In the Crimson’s must-win game Sunday morning, he got all of a pitch that would have kept the team’s season alive had it left the park. The wind kept it just inside O’Donnell Field, and Harvard ended up losing.

But if you’re Joe Llanes and you have the opportunity to play baseball at Fenway a couple of days later, what else can you do but keep trying? Llanes did just that, gunning down a runner at the plate in the sixth inning yesterday to keep his team within striking distance.

The play will be largely forgotten years from now, especially considering the game’s more memorable later innings. It shouldn’t be.

The sun still shines for sophomore catcher Brian Lentz as well. Lentz hit two home runs in the second Dartmouth game on Saturday, and the second sent the game into extra innings. Lentz could only watch as a pitch he called from Birtwell was sent soaring past the centerfield wall to nullify his homer.

But, if you’re a guy like Lentz and you’re given the opportunity to play baseball at Fenway a couple of days later, what else can you do but shrug it off and keep swinging? Lentz did just that yesterday, and knocked a Jesse Santos pitch over the park’s famed Green Monster in left to cap off a five-run rally in the top of the ninth.