Hal Sundt '12 satdown with 2010 First-Team All-NCAC Selection and Third-Team All-Regional selection Ben Puterbaugh to get an indepth look at what really makes Oberlin's all-time hits leader tick.

It is a Wednesday in late March, only two days until most of the students from Oberlin College will depart from this small pocket of solace tucked away in northeast Ohio. Along the sidewalk connecting Wilder Hall and Mudd Library some students lean against the cold metal bike racks taking long drags from Pall Malls and Marlboros, while others walk briskly to their next class, the former sucking down thick smoke deep into their lungs, the latter taking in the crisp March air as it rushes through their noses and clings to the back of their tongue. Along the paths the students are moving, gesturing, smoking, breathing, laughing, walking; but they are inside a bubble which remains still while the rest of the world violently spins.

Somewhere a man in this bubble is sifting through the smoke and the drizzle of rain. His 5-foot-11 frame does not draw attention to himself, but rather moves unassumingly, like everyone else. As he walks, missiles soar above Libya and weeping mothers, brothers, and children in Japan attempt to put the pieces of their lives back together. On this day thousands of pairs of bright, excited eyes will enter the world and thousands of others will leave it behind.

And on this day, and every other day just the same, the world does not revolve around the game of baseball. And Ben Puterbaugh knows it.

He sits down at a long, narrow table in Stevenson Dining Hall across from a couple of baseball and basketball players.

“Congrats on breaking the all-time hits record, Puterbaugh!” says one of the basketball players.

“Oh yeah, thanks man,” replies Puterbaugh in a relaxed drawl, as if each word is stuck in molasses.

Throughout the rest of the meal Puterbaugh remains relatively silent, contently leaning over his plate of spinach or tofu, or whatever vegetarian college baseball players eat for dinner.

Puterbaugh's humbleness is not surprising to those who know him. He appreciates how his hard work has paid off but keeps his success all in perspective.

“I know there are more important things than baseball,” Puterbaugh says. “Probably because I have a wonderful family and I think they raised me well.”

Perhaps his upbringing is also responsible for his ability to remain in the moment. Each word leaves his mouth in a patient manner because he's in no rush to get to the next word. Much like his approach to hitting, he remains focused on each word and further, each task at hand. And when he is at the plate, that task is simple: hit the ball.

“As soon as I step up there I'm just trying to focus on getting my eyes set so I'm ready to pick up the pitch and I'm thinking about where the ball's going to be coming from,” Puterbaugh explains. “I like to take the ball up the middle and to right field a lot. I'm just trying to stay inside the ball.”

It took Ben Puterbaugh two games into his senior season to break Oberlin College's career hits record (previously held at 142). It was a record that he broke, and will eventually shatter, with hard line drives to right field: the easiest way to get a hit in baseball, according to him.

But with all the hits, all the records and all the individual accolades, Puterbaugh maintains a unique, almost bizarre, perspective in relation to his sport, quite contrary to many student-athletes clinging onto their last years of gridiron glory and hoop dreams. Don't be mistaken, Puterbaugh is not simply mailing it in during his final season. He works hard, committed in the weight room and on the field, but he has also been able to maximize his college experience. In the Fall of his junior and senior years, Puterbaugh studied abroad in the Dominican Republic at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra. This past Fall he directly enrolled in the institution in which his classes, such as Philosophy of Law and Dominican-Haitian relations (two classes of interest for his Politics major) were taught completely in Spanish. In addition, his immersion experience still allowed him to keep playing baseball.

“In my free time I would go to a field where local kids would be playing and trying to get signed and we'd have practices and a couple of games a week,” Puterbaugh adds. “They're [Dominican players] pretty confident players, it's definitely a different game. They're kind of flashy. I think it's good because players in the United States get too [concerned] with fundamentals and being fundamentally sound instead of just going out there relaxed and playing. That's one thing that I try to emulate here is just going out, having fun and making plays.”

Puterbaugh's outlook on the game serves two incredibly valuable purposes for someone who may be facing the end of his career (unless he plays professionally, which is a realistic possibility). First, Puterbaugh can simply enjoy playing the game that he loves. And second, when he does finally stop playing, he will be able to leave the game and move on to the next chapter of his life.

Following graduation, Puterbaugh plans to return to the Dominican Republic, where he will be an organic farmer for a month or so. Eventually he hopes to pursue a master's degree in Latin American Studies. He doesn't know where, or when, or exactly why he wants to, but these will all be answers that he figures out, consistent with his personality, when the time comes.

And as far as never officially being a “baseball player” again, Puterbaugh insists that whenever he does stop playing, he will be just fine living without that recognition.

“I don't want people to look at me solely as a baseball player because I think I bring other things and have other qualities,” Puterbaugh says. “I don't mind at all that people may not know that I play baseball when I walk around campus. That's totally fine with me. I don't want that to affect the way people think of me.”

When the interview concludes, Puterbaugh slings his backpack over his royal blue cotton cardigan and adjusts the loose-fitting brown beanie atop his brown mop of hair before eventually departing into the still-drizzling, overcast curtain enclosing Oberlin College. In the following days, as the national debt continued to grow and the United States sent more and more troops overseas, Winter's last breath howled across the campus grounds, freezing the droplets of rain dripping from the tips of the grass that rests between Mudd Library and Wilder Hall.

And somewhere on campus Ben Puterbaugh took in a deep breath as he appreciated just how lucky he was to still be hitting a ball with a stick.

The Yeomen, who are off to a 10-10 (1-3 NCAC) start, are set to open their season at home on Thursday against Capital at 2 p.m.