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Zarzour's senior baseball season didn't quite go as well as his basketball season — or his junior year on the diamond. It took him about a month to get back into "baseball shape." His knees were sore sometimes, and he got knocked around pretty good a few times but still finished with a respectable record of 10-3, with an ERA of 2.45. He averaged about 12 strikeouts a game. He had four complete games and four shutouts.
Still, his baseball stock was through the roof because of one word — potential. (And 7-foot-2 potential at that).
"When he follows through on his delivery," a reporter from The Franklin Times newspaper wrote, "it's like he's close enough to the plate to grab the bat out of the hitter's hands before they can swing at his offering. They certainly feel that way when his fastball zings by at 95 miles per hour or his wicked slider dives out of sight just as it makes its approach to the plate."
Scouts from all sorts of Major League franchises starting replacing college coaches during Zarzour's senior season, once he made his very public radio announcement to a nation full of 'clones' that he was choosing baseball. Often, you'd find 10 to 12 radar guns aimed at Zarzour from behind home plate on a given night. Even the Yankees and Red Sox visited, as did representatives from Zarzour's favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies. As long as the little red numbers kept reading in the low-90s when Zarzour pitched, they would return.
All wanted to know the same things: was this gentle but towering prospect a legit pitching talent for their club and why is he really choosing baseball over hoops?
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