SENIOR SPOTLIGHT: Rob Wheeler, Baseball

It’s been a rough month for Rob Wheeler.

The genial, 6’3 Minnesotan has a lot on his mind—and a lot of bench time to think about it.

He boasts a .300 average and one of the sweetest swings on the team. When he does get the call, Wheeler makes the most of it.

It’s May 1. After losing his job as the team’s consistent DH—he hasn’t started in 10 games over two weeks after a fast start early in the season—Wheeler finds himself starting in the seven-hole against Cape Cod League MVP Josh Faiola, a highly-touted fireballer from Dartmouth, in the Ivy season’s penultimate weekend.

Lucky guy.

Before his first at-bat, Wheeler ambles to the plate. Dartmouth’s traveling heckling crew, which made the trip from Hanover this morning, doesn’t recognize the 230-pound Harvard senior and takes a few half-hearted digs at his size.

Wheeler doesn’t quite look the ballplayer; the guy teammates call “Doggie” is large—but not overweight—and yet not in the imposing way that makes 210-pound teammate Josh Klimkiewicz such an intimidating presence when he steps to the plate.

And yet he punishes Faiola’s high fastball way over the bushes beyond left field for a towering home run. He finishes with a perfect 3-for-3 day at the plate and five RBI.

For the next two weeks, Wheeler will only make a few pinch-hitting appearances. In his last at-bat at Harvard’s O’Donnell Field on May 29, Wheeler strikes out.

“It would’ve felt better to go out a little better,” says Wheeler, whose disposition is content and whom Harvard coach Joe Walsh has called “the ultimate team player.”

“But I mean,” Wheeler adds, “we won, and we entered the regionals, and this is exactly how I would’ve hoped to end my career here.”

What Rob Wheeler accomplished on the field at Harvard in 2005—a sparkling .316 average, 13 RBI in just 57 at-bats during his senior season—makes up a small portion of his team impact, an impact that remains truly immeasurable.

“There are so many intangibles that he’s brought to us,” Walsh says of the charismatic senior. “You know? And he’s a character. And amongst everything, he loves the game. He just loves the game. You know, he’s chasing foul balls. He’ll get up and pinch-hit, and the first guy that goes in to replace him, he’s pulling for him.”

“You know,” Walsh adds, “you get a bunch of Rob Wheelers, and you’re going to win games.”

And still, no matter how much time Rob Wheeler devotes to the thoughts that roil within his mind, that time—for you, for me, for him, for anyone—remains inadequate.

“Everything’s been going so fast that I really haven’t been able to stop to think about that,” Wheeler says.

On June 23, just two weeks after graduation, Rob Wheeler will ship out to Fort Jackson, S.C., for the Army’s Basic Training.

On Sept. 6, he will commence 14 weeks of Officer Candidate School. After New Year’s, Wheeler will take his specialty course.

“And that’ll be the time when it’s either more training or time for deployment,” Wheeler says. “So that’s still about a year off. There’s a lot of training and learning to do.”

And so the ultimate team guy will join the ultimate team. Wheeler concedes a bit of nervousness, especially concerning his parents.

“But I mean,” he says, gazing upon O’Donnell Field as a player for the last time in his career, “it’s something I feel like I should do.”

Wheeler entered Harvard College in September 2001, and like so many other seniors around the nation, saw his world change immediately.

Wheeler says the attacks of September 11 were the “trigger” of his decision, but not necessarily the final motivation.

“Up until last year,” he says, “I still thought I was going to be an I-Banker.”

During the summer, Wheeler worked a desk job as an intern at a corporation, and it “didn’t feel that fulfilling.”

“I’d check out cnn.com and see guys doing something that I felt like was really worthy,” Wheeler says.

For a minute, the amiable grin turns serious. Wheeler looks you directly in the eye.

“I’ve always looked up to the military,” he says. “I supported the war. I support what we’re doing over in the Middle East.”

And yet what Wheeler says next might well garner respect from both sides of the war debate: “I felt like if that’s how I truly feel I should be willing to fight for it.”

The senior expects his Applied Mathematics degree, which only 36 graduating seniors earned in 2004, to come in handy.

“I hope to do strategy of some sort,” Wheeler says. “Hopefully analyze, maybe, economic conditions. Or military strategies. I’ll definitely use my background.”

“Also, maybe code-breaking or something like that,” he adds, “or engineering. There are so many different avenues.”

The coach knows it.

“He’s a tremendous student,” Walsh says. “Very conscious about his grades. And the fact that he could’ve had many other opportunities and my mind, and this is something he wants to do...”

Walsh’s voice trails off and comes to a stop.

“We’re hoping some day four or five years from now we’ll have somebody come in and we’ll say, ‘We’ve found us a Wheeler,’” Walsh says, smiling. “‘He’s just like Robby Wheeler.’”

For the team, and for the teammates, the more, the better.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.