“From Dalhart to Del Rio and out El Paso way, well I’ll be doin’ fine on Houston time,” sings the songwriter/country singer Pat Green in the pick-me-up song “I Like Texas.”

“I was born a native Texican, and I’m proud to say that I am.”

Green drones on with simple melodies and efficient lines, letting his effortless, down-home style carry the rest of his 2001 album “Here We Go.”

Like his favorite country singer, Hendricks doesn’t waste time, movement or words.

A “quiet player” according to teammate Zak Farkes, the co-captain nonetheless leads with his bat and with his arm, consistently doing what’s asked.

“He’s a captain, a very good leader,” Farkes says. “He’s not a rah-rah type guy. He doesn’t get in your face, but he’s really a lead-by-example type guy.”

Hendricks plays like a professional—or “all business,” according to Farkes—something you can bet the senior will be doing a year from now.

Between summers swinging wooden bats with the nation’s best—in the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) and the Cape Cod League—Hendricks found time during his junior year to lead the Crimson in hitting (.387) and slugging (.623), and finished second on the team in RBIs (29). His .387 average was the second best in the Ivy League.

The only switch hitter in the starting lineup, he’s off to a blistering start at the plate this season (.558 3 12).

Like fellow Texan switch-hitter Lance Berkman—a former Rice standout and current all-star leftfielder with the Houston Astros—the 6’4, 215-lb. Hendricks is only beginning to scratch his potential. Hendricks models his swing after the Astros star, driving the ball to all fields from both sides of the plate.

Walsh, who once coached Berkman in a Texas summer league, sees the comparison.

“They’re both guys who can hit from both sides of the plate with average and power,” he says. But he punctuates his comparison with an important addendum—“Berkman was a first-rounder.”

Unlike Berkman, Hendricks is not at a point when he can cover major league outfields or hit balls well over 450 feet. But that’s not to say he won’t get there.

Walsh remembers Berkman as “a first base/DH type”—a typecast usually reserved for slow, big men who logjam the minor leagues—when he coached him that summer. In 2002, his second year as a full-time player, Berkman was starting in centerfield at Houston’s Minute Maid Park.

Hendricks, an unvaryingly hard worker, has already shown a penchant for improving his physique with cardio work and weight training.