Apr 8, 2007 By Rob Burchianti 5 min read

MASONTOWN – Gene Franks IV is swinging a red-hot bat for Albert Gallatin’s baseball team. Franks is 9 for 12 this year for a stupendous .750 batting average and has seven hits in his last seven official at bats.

“He’s really off to an outstanding start,” Colonials coach Shawn Chory said.

Not bad for a ballplayer who was supposed to out for the season.

Franks, the son of Gene III and Carla Franks of Masontown, had a superb 2006 junior season in which he broke the Albert Gallatin school record for career home runs and hits, upping those totals to 12 and 70.

He went on to play in the Keystone State Games, in the Fayette County Baseball League and for the Allegheny Pirates.

Franks dislocated his knee in June, but he rehabilitated it and had a strong season for the Carmichaels Copperheads, helping them win the FCBL championship.

Franks was a member of the Allegheny Pirates last fall, which is a premier high school team made up of some of the best scholastic players in Western Pa. California’s Zack Jeney, Connellsville’s Joe Leonard and Waynesburg Central’s Mitch Monas were also on the Allegheny roster.

Playing for that dream team turned into a nightmare for Franks, though, as he re-injured his knee twice, once in a game played in Annapolis, Md., at the Naval Academy on Sept. 9 and again while playing at North Carolina State on Oct. 21.

“At that point, they basically told him if he wanted to continue to play baseball, he was going to have to have surgery on the knee,” Gene III said. “And they said he’d probably wouldn’t be able to play his senior year.”

On Monday, Nov. 27, Franks had the surgery.

“He had it done at Shady Side by Dr. Bradley,” Gene III said. “It went better than expected. The injuries weren’t nearly as bad as they thought.”

The injury had already cost Franks a potential scholarship to Duquesne University, though.

“He had an offer from Duquesne and wanted to go there, but after he got injured they pulled back on signing him,” Gene III said.

Perhaps the Dukes didn’t realize how determined Franks was to get back on the field as quick as possible.

“He worked real hard,” Gene III said. “Jim Burns, the director for the Centers for Rehab Services in Uniontown, did an excellent job with him.”

It wasn’t easy at first, not by a long shot.

“I was basically dead tired when I left there after the surgery, and on the way home I was absolutely miserable because of the pain in my knee,” Gene IV said. “I was really worried about going through rehab, but then I decided the best thing to do was to go straight into it as hard as I could.”

So he gritted his teeth and did just that.

“I remember the first day of rehab was very, very hard,” Gene IV said. “My knee was tight and there was a lot of pain. It took a little while, but then I could feel it improving.”

His father was there with him for the ride.

“It was tough,” Gene III said. “He struggled for awhile. It was tough on both of us really. We always practiced all winter long, but we couldn’t do that.”

Finally, Gene IV got to the point where he could stand and swing a bat.

“The first time I hit I was like, ‘Yes!’ I hit in a batting cage,” he said.

While most players might take a while to get their timing down, a natural born hitter such as Franks had no such problem.

“Not really,” Gene IV said. “It all came back pretty good.”

“Things are going really well,” Gene III said. “He’s close to 100 percent.”

The 6-foot-3, 210-pound slugger improved so quickly he was surprisingly ready for the first day of spring practice, and, obviously by the results, he has indeed made a strong recovery. He is playing the corners and pitching for the Colonials, and already is commanding the same respect from opponents that he has in the past.

“Penn-Trafford was beating us 9-2 late in the game and we had Gene coming up with runners on second and third,” Chory said. “They intentionally walked him. Even though they had a big lead, they preferred to give us a free base runner than let Gene swing the bat. Most teams try not to give him too much to hit, but that sort of surprised me there.”

Despite such strategies, Franks has six RBIs in five games, including a pair of sacrifice flies. He has yet to strikeout and has drawn five walks.

“I wear a brace for my knee and turf shoes,” Gene IV said. “Other than that, everything is pretty much the same again. I’m hoping to have a good year. My goal is for our team to do well and for me to catch a couple more records along the way.”

And a scholarship is in the offing once again.

“We’re getting some interest from colleges now,” said Gene III, with one of those being Marietta College in Georgia. “He really doesn’t have a frontrunner right now.

“He’s worked hard to get back to where he’s at. It’s nice to be back to normal.”