“[I have] nothing against those players that hit it before,” Walsh said.

“But we’re playing some pretty good ballclubs. There aren’t a lot of MITs and Tufts that are on our schedule that were back then. He’s hitting some homers off some pretty good pitchers.”

And if you ask anyone on the team about what makes Zak Farkes good enough to hit those home runs, you inevitably return to the one thing the sophomore is even more notorious for than home runs: work ethic.

“He just comes to play every day,” Walsh said. “If we’re out on the field at 10:30 a.m., he’s at the batting cages at 9. You just can’t beat him to the ballpark. If you’ve got that work ethic in anything, it’s going to pay off for you, and he’s showing it at the plate.”

On Saturday and yesterday, noticeably, Dartmouth fans repeatedly shouted chants of “Eddie’s better” at Farkes—a reference to Big Green shortstop Ed Lucas, who headed into the weekend batting .458—but their jeers were without reason, to say the least.

The Crimson infielder out-hit Lucas during the series by a margin of six hits to three and 16 RBI to just six by his Dartmouth counterpart. Lucas has hit four home runs this season.

Farkes hit four this weekend.

“Those fans made me focused even more,” Farkes said. “It’s great to have people out here, whether they’re rooting for us or rooting against us. It just brings up the whole level of the game.”

But if you’d only heard that sound of rawhide striking metal, you wouldn’t even need to hear him say that.

Without hearing a word, you’d already know that no one had raised his game more than Zak Farkes.

Not then, not now, and maybe not ever.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.