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.