HANOVER, N.H.—Since I’ve been here, Harvard has never played for a national ranking, a regional seed or an at-large NCAA tournament bid. Sometimes the team didn’t even play for scouts, and they never played for large crowds.

But none of that has ever really bothered me.

This week, though, the baseball team will be playing for something I’ve never seen it play for—nothing—and it just seems so wrong.

There are two more games, you know.

That’s the saddest part of all.

And now a team that years from now I will remember for its thrilling comebacks over Brown will end its year with no drama at all.

And now seniors that I’ll remember for the things they did in the thick of Ivy races—the diving catches and the 140-pitch efforts and the walk-off game-winning doubles—will end their careers playing in games they hardly care about.

The last two games of the season won’t be Harvard baseball, and it’s a shame, because the Crimson players made sure the last weekend of the season was. Even if it wasn’t enough to win Harvard’s third-consecutive division title, this weekend was Harvard baseball.

Everything on the line. No laws, no limits, no one holding back.

If you have to pick somewhere to start, it’s got to be with Trey Hendricks. The senior. The co-captain. The ace. The slugger.

The guy that Harvard coach Joe Walsh, with an emotional twinge in his voice, said after yesterday’s devastating loss, “A few years from now, you’ll read about him being inducted into the Harvard Hall of Fame.”

In Saturday’s split, Hendricks went 7-for-9 with a pair of homers, and entered the second game with a 10-7 lead after seven. He coasted through the eighth, but in the ninth, a few low strikes weren’t called and a few high ones knocked over the fence in a crushing Dartmouth comeback. He ended up allowing six runs and throwing 60 pitches.

He should never have taken the mound yesterday, less than 20 hours later, but he did, and he was fantastic. In a seven-inning complete game shutout, he allowed only six hits, two on bunts, one on a chintzy Texas-leaguer off a bat handle. He kept his pitch count—and his fastball—down, and he outdueled the Big Green’s ace Tim Grant for the 5-0 Harvard win.

It was the sweetest form of redemption, but Hendricks wasn’t done.

“Hendricks,” Walsh said, shaking his head with a look of admiration. “He wanted the ball for the second game today. I had to walk away from him because he just kept talking, and he probably would have talked me into it.”