Great Falls' Harrison Faulk getting unique start on path to Major League Baseball dream
Getting to the major leagues is the end game for every young baseball player, but only a tiny percentage of hitters, pitchers and fielders ever achieve that goal.
Getting to the major leagues is the end game for every young baseball player, but only a tiny percentage of hitters, pitchers and fielders ever achieve that goal.
Harrison Faulk was once one of those dreamers, but he realized many years ago that he didn't have the raw physical talent to make it to the majors – or even much past Little League. But he was convinced that hard work and a love for the game would allow him to advance a long way in the sport.
Faulk, a 25-year-old Great Falls native, has already made it a long way, and he plans to go further. He begins the next phase of his promising professional baseball career next week at the Player Development Complex in Goodyear, Arizona, where he will work as an assistant athletic trainer for the Cleveland Guardians of the American League.
"It's a great opportunity and I can't wait for the chance to work with some great staff and athletes," Faulk said Friday before he departed for Arizona. "I had a lot of interviews (Zoom) over the winter and I feel fortunate to get this chance."
Faulk fell in love with baseball as a little kid and was willing to try anything to stay involved with the game.
"My family had season tickets to (Great Falls) Voyagers games and I became a batboy for the club in 2012," he recalled. "Then I moved up to assistant club manager through high school at CMR."
Faulk spent many hours in the locker room, training room and front office, as well as the dugout, bullpen and playing field. He loved all of it, and turned his energy toward a career in the sport outside the diagonal lines.
After graduating from Great Falls CMR in 2017, he attended Montana State Billings, where he studied health and human performance while also working with the Yellowjackets baseball team – the only four-year college with a baseball program in Montana. He stayed at MSUB and earned a masters degree in athletic training.
He also spent five summers in Billings working for the Billings Mustangs – one of the Pioneer League rivals of his hometown Voyagers. A few years ago, he had the opportunity to "square off" against his younger sister, Sarah, who was serving as a batgirl for the Voyagers while Harrison was clubhouse manager for the Mustangs.
After graduating with his advanced degree in 2022, Faulk decided he needed more than a seasonal job. He accepted an offer from the Great Falls School District to serve as an athletic trainer at CMR.
"That was a great experience, working with coaches that I knew and with athletes in other sports," he said. One of those athletes was Sarah, who had developed into an all-state catcher with the Rustlers' softball team.
But his "passion for baseball" took him back to the sport.
He spent last summer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, working for the Chicago White Sox Class A farm club, the Dash. It was another example of Faulk benefitting from his long-ago contacts in the Pioneer League, which is now a Partner League rather than an affiliated minor league organization.
One of those contacts was Ryan Fair, a former employee of the Ogden (Utah) Raptors who is head of the Sports Science department for the Guardians.
Faulk expects to spend the next year in Arizona working mostly with minor leaguers, but also with major leaguers assigned to the complex for rehab workouts.
"I think it will be mostly young kids not quite ready for low Class A or AA leagues, and after the draft in July there will be high school and college kids," he said.
Faulk still has plenty of time to achieve his ultimate goal of working in the major leagues.
"Long term, I would be a big-league athletic trainer," he said in a recent interview with other media. "After that, I think a front-office role would be really fun."
If Faulk makes it to the top, he would become just the third CMR graduate to make it to the major leagues. John Leister, now 63 and living in Michigan, was a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox in 1987 and 1990. Tyler Graham, now 40 and also living in Michigan, played for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2012.