They play night games in Texas.

Light glares down from the poles, sparkling off of Spring High Field as brilliantly as it would any diamond. Beyond the fence in right, sweet barbecue smoke curls up from tailgates, cloudy against the dark blue sky. It’s muggy. It’s gametime.

A bunch of blue-capped kids—some two years removed from puberty, others two seasons shy of prosperity—trot onto the field to a dull roar. Nine-year-olds with baseball mitts perk up, eagerly awaiting the chance to snag a foul ball.

For two hours, the Spring Lions are the biggest game in town. In 2000, Trey Hendricks was their biggest star. He was first team all-city, all-district and all-state, and in Texas, people care.

“After the games little kids would come up to me and ask for my autograph,” Hendricks says. “You are in high school, and [you think], ‘What do you want my autograph for?’”

Hendricks signed plenty of autographs his senior spring; he also signed a national letter-of-intent to play baseball at Harvard.

The 6’2 righthander led Metro Houston in strikeouts, racked up a 10-2 record and batted over .400. Like many of the city’s prep stars, he was recruited by big-time local baseball schools Rice and Baylor. He was a Collegiate Baseball Blue Chip and a draftable pitching prospect. He was a Texas boy.

Three years later, he’s a Harvard man.

THE ROAD TAKEN

Like most Harvard undergrads, Hendricks grew up dreaming of ivy—but it was the kind climbing up the outfield wall of Wrigley Field. Harvard was never the dream. Baseball always was.

Sure, Hendricks—now the Crimson’s switch-hitting first baseman and premier player—was a good student, a member of the National Honor Society and all that, but ever since he was two years old and swinging a whiffle ball bat, he was a helluva ballplayer.

You don’t have to be Peter Gammons to know that the most direct route to Fenway Park isn’t through O’Donnell Field. So why Harvard?

When Hendricks committed to Harvard, the Crimson was coming off three straight Ivy titles and was a year removed from a No. 24 national ranking. Harvard had become one of the top baseball programs above the Mason-Dixon line, and Crimson coach Joe Walsh was using that to bring in talent. And besides, Harvard is Harvard.

“It’s pretty easy calling up some areas and saying, ‘Hi, this is Coach Walsh from Harvard baseball,’” Walsh says. “We get a great reception when it’s ‘Harvard,’ you know?”

So the name and the fame got Hendricks to come on an official visit in late November of 1999. He arrived the Sunday after Harvard-Yale, and it was a balmy 75 degrees. Despite the comparatively poor facilities and the general sluggishness of the campus—typical of post-Game recovery—Hendricks was impressed.