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Going yard at Harvard: slugger Farkes thinks deep
By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist, 5/5/2004 When you think about big league baseball talent at the college level, Harvard doesn't usually come to mind. There's Georgia Tech, home of Nomar Garciaparra and Jason Varitek. There's Southern Cal, where Bill Lee, Fred Lynn, and a million other guys played. LSU, Arizona, and Miami are other collegiate baseball factories. But Harvard has its ties to the majors. The Crimson actually played in the first game at Fenway Park, losing to the Red Sox, 2-0, on April 9, 1912, one day before the Titanic left Southampton, England. The Cambridge campus is not a standard stop on the road to the majors, but Pete Varney (White Sox, Braves), Ray Peters (Brewers), Mike Stenhouse (a member of the 1986 Red Sox), and Jeff Musselman (Blue Jays, Mets) were post-'60s sons of Harvard to make it to the Show. Now there's Zak Farkes, a sophomore infielder who tore up the Ivy League and set Harvard home run records this year. Both Farkes and senior teammate Trey Hendricks might be drafted by big league teams next month. Farkes grew up in the Back Bay and played his Little League ball on Boston Common before starring at Buckingham Browne & Nichols. This spring, he set the Crimson's season and career home run records. Going into today's season finale vs. Northeastern (3 o'clock at Harvard's Joe O'Donnell Field), Farkes has 14 home runs, giving him 22 in his two-year career. The Ivy League career home run record is 32, set by Brown's John King (Columbia first baseman Lou Gehrig obviously left school too early), but nobody is certain that Farkes will be around Cambridge long enough to become the Ivy long-ball leader. Like a lot of young players, Farkes has his sights set on the majors. "My goal has been to get to the major leagues since I was 6 years old," said Zak, son of Gary and Renee Farkes. Zak's father is from the Bronx and his mother is from Dorchester. They're raising their four sons, all baseball guys, in a neighborhood where parking spaces cost more than suburban homes, and the closest thing to a field is the Public Garden. Zak and brothers Josh (University of Richmond), Adam (BB&N), and Alex (Dexter) learned to play catch in the back alleys of the Back Bay. "I broke my share of windows," said Farkes. Now he's breaking home run records. A middle infielder of average size (5 feet 11 inches, 190 pounds), Farkes was not recruited to hit home runs, but he cracked eight in his freshman season, when he was voted Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and this season he has turned up the power. A four-homer outburst (in four games) against Dartmouth last weekend made him the Crimson's all-time home run king. Harvard-watchers are still talking about a walkoff shot he hit against UMass in the Beanpot consolation game at Brockton. Yesterday against Holy Cross, he settled for a double to the base of the fence in right-center and two RBIs in an 8-7, 12-inning win. "It's his bat speed and athleticism," says Harvard coach Joe Walsh, a veteran of nine years in Cambridge. "He sneaks into the cages every chance he gets. He's going to be the guy, 15 years from now if I'm still here, I'm going to be saying, `Hey, we had a kid here named Zak Farkes and here's what he used to do . . .' " "He has a real passion to succeed, and his best baseball is ahead of him," adds assistant coach Matt Hyde. Farkes turns 21 at the end of the month. He cites BB&N coaches Rick Foresteire, Jesse Sarzana, and Craig McLaughlin as his hardball inspiration and says the best pitching he's seen was last summer in the New England College Baseball League in Torrington, Conn. This summer, Farkes plans to play for Wareham in the Cape Cod League . . . unless he signs a contract to play professionally. "Having a chance to be drafted is still shocking to me," he says. "It's pretty scary to look ahead. It would be a tough decision for me this year. This team means so much to me. We've had a couple of subpar seasons [21-17-1 this year] and I want to come back and play as good as we can. But pro ball is so enticing." If Farkes doesn't go pro, Hendricks looks like a sure shot for the minors this summer. Hendricks, a switch-hitting infielder from Houston, is hitting .438 with 20 career homers. Farkes has a couple of ties to the majors already. He played at Fenway last year when the Beanpot was held on Yawkey Way (note to community-friendly Sox management: get the Beanpot back in Fenway next year, and that goes for high school all-star games, too) and he was the unofficial campus guide when then-Ranger Alex Rodriguez toured Harvard a couple of years ago. "He asked me about my college board scores and my GPA," recalls Farkes. "And he asked me if I could hit." Apparently, the kid can hit. And it's all still in front of him. No matter what happens with baseball, Farkes plans to finish his studies at Harvard. He is an English major, living in Eliot House, and knows the value of the Harvard degree. "Whenever baseball is over for me, I want to teach English and coach baseball," he says. "I want to follow the path of those who've meant the most to me." No doubt he'll be teased when he first plays in the minors. The Harvard kid always gets teased out there in the real world. But the teasing will stop as soon as they see his game. Zak Farkes can play. Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com. This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 5/5/2004. |
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