“I can go home and do my laundry, get a home-cooked meal every once in a while, and have my brothers to fool around with if I have a bad day or something like that,” he adds.

His family, including his three baseball-playing younger brothers, lives just a block from Fenway Park, where Farkes grew up walking to Red Sox games.

Getting to be that close to home during college also means being close to maybe the most important name on that extensive list of personal heroes: his father.

“[He] taught me to play baseball, taught me pretty much everything,” Farkes says. “Number-one guy I look up to...He’s been probably the biggest influence on my life.”

WORK IT OUT

Needless to say, baseball and the drive to succeed in it have been a part of his life since day one.

But after such an impressive rookie season, where can Boston’s native son possibly go from here?

“Obviously my next goal is to win Player of the Year—I guess,” Farkes says matter-of-factly. “But the season’s just started, and I’m just trying to play well, win games, hit the ball hard, stuff like that. And hopefully it will take care of itself.”

He makes it sound so easy. But the truth of the matter is that Farkes works hard.

Very hard.

“One of the hardest workers, I’d say, on the team,” Salsgiver says.

Walsh calls Farkes a “24-hour-a-day baseball player.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a kid here at Harvard or elsewhere who is as dedicated to the game of baseball as Zak is,” he says. “I came in here yesterday morning at about eight o’clock and he’d already finished his workout.”

To Farkes, that level of work is the only option available if he’s going to improve on last year’s performance.

“I had some success last year but I really want to go out and do even better this year, and even better the next year, and the next year,” he says. “And if I ever get the chance to play in the pros…”