BASEBALL 2005: All Grown Up

The last time you saw him, the sun was shining.

His red cap was pulled low to shield eye-blackened cheeks, and Harvard was in the frantic stretch of an Ivy title run, a time when eight months of exhaustion and irritation and monotony condense into eight games of ecstasy. And through it all, the shortstop was making history, one sweet swing and hurried home run trot at a time.

* * *

The last time you saw him, it was almost summer.

The hometown boy with the name of a Greek hero and the crown of a home run king was a month away from all he’d ever wanted—a shot at the big leagues, and with the Red Sox, no less.

* * *

The last time you saw him, Zak Ulysses Farkes was on top of the world.

So why does he seem so much closer to the promised land now?

* * *

A lot has happened since the last time you saw Zak Farkes, and a lot of it was hell.

Farkes, disappointed with falling to the 39th round of the draft, went to prove himself against the best amateur competition in the country, the Cape Cod Baseball League.

It’s the kind of chance that kids playing high school ball in places like Cambridge dream of, but halfway through the season a kid with no quit in him almost did just that.

His throwing shoulder—long tight and often sore—was throbbing. X-Rays and MRIs from the fall had come back clean, but finally at the end of Harvard’s season an arthroCT scan had revealed a frayed labrum. His shoulder would hurt until he had surgery.

But Farkes had played through pain for two full seasons, and he couldn’t say no to the Cape. So standing deep in the infield grass, he’d pray the guy from Florida State or Texas digging into the dirt of that batter’s box didn’t hit a ball to his backhand, because the long throw from the hole just hurt too much.

“[In June] they said we can fix this now and you can miss the Cape season, or you can go out and play and we can fix it later,” Farkes says. “At that point, I had just been drafted, and was still thinking about that, and I thought I could keep playing. But the pain got to that point where I wasn’t sure.”

For a week, he thought he’d have to quit. But the pain subsided enough for him to finish out a mediocre season. He batted just .188 with a single home run for the Wareham Gatemen—though to be fair, it was with a wooden bat in a pitcher’s league—but even with a frayed labrum only three players on the roster played more games than he did.

Still, going out every day, giving his best but not his best, was grueling.

“It was tough for me to kind of choke a few throws that I really wanted to let go early in the season, knowing that I had to save something, so I’d have something left in the tank,” Farkes says. “It was tough on me mentally.”

But Farkes is a baseball addict, and for guys like him, the worst kind of pain isn’t playing hurt.

It’s not playing at all.

And that was coming next.

* * *

Move-in day was a dark one for Farkes.

While you were unpacking boxes or putting the final touches on a summer tan, Zak Farkes was having shoulder surgery.

And on the first day of classes—a universal day of new beginnings—Farkes walked into English 178x at 11 a.m., arm in sling, and ended his own childhood dream. Pro clubs like the Red Sox aren’t allowed to sign students once they attend their first class, shopping period or not.

So Farkes wasn’t playing in rookie level Ft. Myers or short-season Lowell, and he wasn’t playing fall ball in Cambridge either.

A huge crop of talented freshmen was out there, courtesy of Harvard coach Joe Walsh, flashing power and poise, and making team veterans murmur as early as October that this was the year. Walsh was equally giddy, and as team practices turned to team scrimmages, the chemistry building up was apparent. Especially to Farkes, who went to every practice in a sling and watched.

“The toughest time was when I was in a sling,” Farkes says. “I couldn’t take my arm out. I couldn’t move. All I could do was ice it about five to six hours a day. It was brutal.”

The team’s returning leader in every triple crown category, the kid who had started all 83 games of his Harvard career and who would have been, without a doubt, Sky Mann’s de facto assistant captain in practice if not in name, had to just stand there.

After four weeks, the sling came off, and Boston Bruins physical therapist Scott Waugh and Farkes sat down and developed a timetable for his rehab.

For the first three weeks, they stretched the arm. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Farkes would trek into Boston before class and meet with Waugh, who would twist and pull the shoulder in every direction to get back the lost range of motion.

Then they had to build back up the muscles, atrophied by lack of use. They started with elastic cords and two-pound weights and slowly increased the intensity. Every time Farkes would push too hard, which he admits was probably often, Waugh would pull him back.

“I got my range of motion back two weeks ahead of schedule, and I got my strength back about a month and a half ahead of schedule,” Farkes says. “So I was on the fast track and had to keep slowing myself down. Which was really tough, especially with practice about a month and a half away.”

During the dead season between fall and spring practices, players work out and hit on their own. Last year, Farkes probably took more cuts in the batting cages than anyone, but this year he’d get the emails to the team list—“Hey, I’m going down to Palmer-Dixon to hit, anyone want to come?”—and wince.

“I just wanted to get in it so much,” Farkes says. “I even would swing a little bit on my own, just one-hand swings you know? But I was just trying to do everything I could to avoid a setback.”

He swung for the first time on Dec. 9. He threw for the first time on Dec. 16. And yes, those are the exact dates.

Farkes knows because he had them marked on his calendar in late September, and anticipated them like a prisoner waiting to be released from the state pen.

Waugh called up the Phillies trainer who had worked with Curt Schilling after his labrum surgery, and put Farkes on the same throwing plan. He started lobbing. Then tossing from 45 feet. Then 60. They kept going in painfully slow 15-foot increments until he was long tossing.

Through it all, Farkes was logging lots of time in the weight room. He started lifting his arms about six weeks after getting the sling off.

His legs?

“If it wasn’t [when the sling was on], it was close,” Farkes sheepishly admits.

Somewhere, Scott Waugh winces, and his teammates smile.

“I love to watch him play,” Mann says. “He lives baseball. It just oozes out of his pores.”

Zak Farkes is back.

* * *

A couple of weeks into the team’s phantom season—the part of the schedule played thousands of miles from Cambridge when O’Donnell Field is still blanketed in snow—Zak Farkes sits in street clothes and looks every bit the ball player he’s always been, plus a few extra pounds of muscle.

But he sounds a lot different since the last time you saw him.

Last June, when the first day of the draft went by without his name being called, and Farkes plummeted to the 39th round, he was careful choosing his words.

“It’s an absolute dream come true [to be drafted by the Red Sox],” he said.

“Really,” he added a few minutes later, “I’m lucky to have the chance to get drafted.”

Ask him now about that day and Farkes is far more candid.

“I was so disappointed,” Farkes says, his baby face softened in serious sincerity, no eye black tarring his cheeks. “It was devastating. I had all these scouts saying, ‘Yeah, we’re going to take you in the seventh round, blah, blah, blah.’ A lot of it was signability and what not, but at first I was really angry.”

He planned to prove them all wrong in the Cape, the place small school guys make a name for themselves—like former Crimson ace Ben Crockett ’02, who went from a solid Ivy pitcher to a potential first-round pick with a single stellar summer.

But even though Farkes claims his shoulder didn’t affect his swing, he slumped badly to open the season, not uncommon for good college hitters in the pitcher-dominated Cape.

“It was tough to get in a good groove,” Farkes says. “But as my arm started feeling better near the end, I started hitting better and playing better, and I got more comfortable.”

He may not have proved much, but he insists he improved.

Playing on the Cape means baseball is your job, a 12-week whirlwind tour of the minor leagues, or at least the closest simulation in amateur baseball. Every morning you go to the field at 9 a.m. to lift. You return at 4 p.m. for stretching, hitting and fielding before a 7 p.m. game. That’s five hours a day before the game even starts, and a far cry from the life of a Harvard student-athlete.

“As much as it’s my favorite thing in the world to be at the field, and I would be there longer if they’d let me, it wears you down if you don’t know the right way to approach the work you’re getting in,” says Farkes, who is universally admired for his work ethic.

“I thought, ‘Oh, everyone says I have a great work ethic, I’m going to go out and take a hundred more swings,’” he adds. “But it was just too much focus on quantity. I was always paranoid that someone in Florida was working out harder than I was up here in Boston. I was always competing against that.”

* * *

This summer, those phantoms from Florida were his teammates. They were the guys hitting him grounders in the hole, and the guys trying to strike him out. Too often, they were the guys striking him out.

But Farkes is certain that the summer was about the knowledge, not the numbers, he accumulated. He talks about his new mental approach at the plate and in the field. He sounds confident. He sounds all grown up.

So you have to ask, almost apologetically, because it’s a tough question to answer for so many reasons. Even though last year the same question elicited discomfort and no clear answer, when it’s now obvious that he wanted to go. You have to ask.

Is this it?

Farkes doesn’t flinch. He hardly pauses.

“Right now I know that what I want to do with my life is play professional baseball,” Farkes says. “It’s not going to be the worst thing in the world if I have to come back and play senior year, but ideally I’d like to go play professional baseball.”

He says he wasn’t ready last year. Now he is.

“As long as I’m not a filler player,” Farkes says. “If I get a legitimate chance to go out and play, then I’d jump at it. Because it’s been my dream since I was a kid, and I just hope I get the chance to do it again this year.”

* * *

The next time you see him will be this weekend.

He’ll be in the middle of the lineup and in the middle of an Ivy title run that this time last year he wasn’t planning on being a part of.

* * *

The next time you see him, the sun should be shining.

He’ll wear his red hat pulled low over eye-blackened cheeks and the same No. 3 on his jersey. He’ll have the same sweet swing, and the blond hometown boy might just make more history, one hurried home run trot at a time.

* * *

The next time you see him, it will almost be summer, so watch closely. Because the next time you see Zak Farkes may be the last.

At least in a Harvard uniform.

—Staff writer Lande A. Spottswood can be reached at spottsw@fas.harvard.edu.