‘This world is not built for him’

Zane Pacek gets the stares, hears the whispers and sometimes even gets asked for photos.

“People are like, ‘Holy crap, he’s huge,’” said Pacek, a senior at Knoch High School.

At 7 feet tall, 300 pounds, Pacek could be the biggest athlete in the WPIAL’s 120-year history and one of the largest players the sport of baseball has ever seen.

“He doesn’t fit in this world. This world is not built for him,” said his mom, Athena.

Pacek might be enormous — he wears a size18 shoe and aims to consume 4,000 calories a day — but he’s no freak show.

A well-liked and personable teenager, Pacek is an outstanding player, a Division I-bound pitcher who has major league genes and MLB dreams.

“That kid, the ceiling is very high for him,” second-year Knoch coach John Negley said. “I’m anxious to see him go to college and really get someone to work with him because I think he can go a long way.”

A Central Michigan signee, Pacek is one of the central reasons why Knoch is having an excellent spring and could go a long way this season. The Knights are 9-3 and one of the top teams in Class 4A.

Pacek, a burly right-hander, has gotten better each year, but has taken a substantial leap this season. Heading into the week, Zane had some zany numbers. He was 3-1 with a 0.66 ERA, and had allowed one earned run across 18 innings in his previous three starts. While Pacek is gifted and a rare athlete, he’s not perfect. He finally was touched up for the first time Monday when No. 5-ranked Valley tagged him for five runs — including two home runs — in a 6-1 win.

Some of Pacek’s improvement stems from him deciding to focus fully on baseball for the first time. Given his size, most people who see him likely think he’s a basketball player, which he was before giving up the sport after his junior season.

“He had to reevaluate what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go,” mom said. “He realized it was baseball, and he’s been all in.”

It was anything but an easy choice. Pacek had played basketball since he was 4 and was Knoch’s starting center his first three years of high school. Even without Zane, the Knights went on to have a terrific 2025-26 season, winning their first WPIAL championship.

“I had to make that decision,” said Pacek, who was receiving college interest in basketball. “I want to do more things than play in high school or college. I want to get to the highest level and play in the MLB. I want to be the best, and sometimes you have to make difficult decisions to get there.”

So, instead of spending his days dunking on the basketball court — he did that for the first time in eighth grade — Pacek instead dedicated himself to the weight room and working on his mechanics just about every day at Larkins Sports Performance and Fennell Brothers Baseball.

Zane’s decision has resulted in him being tougher than ever to hit. One of the most noticeable improvements has been his control, as he has walked only six batters in 25⅔ innings. He had issued only three free passes prior to Monday’s outing.

“He usually commands the zone,” Negley said. “Even when he’s not throwing that hard, he gets people out just because of the location and command.”

Pacek said he hit 90 mph on the radar gun several times in the fall, and this season his fastball has been regularly sitting in the mid-80s. His arsenal of pitches includes two- and four-seam fastballs, curveball, cutter, sweeper and split changeup, which he said has been his best pitch.

What also makes Pacek so difficult to hit is his immense height. Throwing off the mound at 7-foot tall, the downhill angle of his pitches can make it an ominous task to make contact with the ball. It’s something that batters have never seen before.

That angle is just about impossible to simulate in practice, but at least one team has given it a good try. Defending WPIAL and PIAA champion Indiana plays in the same section as Knoch, and coach Dan Petroff took an unorthodox approach in trying to replicate Zane’s pitches — by having an assistant coach stand on a ladder to throw to players in batting practice.

“With Zane being 7 foot, [the assistant] got up on a ladder to try to simulate that arm angle. You just don’t see 7-footers like that,” said Petroff, whose team is ranked No. 1 in Class 4A and faces Knoch twice next week. “It’s a lot different in the fact that the ball gets on you quicker, no matter what the velocity is.”

Pacek, himself, rarely ever bats. In four plate appearances, he has walked once and has been plunked on one occasion. But when he connects with a ball in practice, it often goes a long way.

“I’ve seen him hit baseballs I’ve never seen travel that far,” said Negley, adding that the next-tallest player on the team is 6-2, a whole 10 inches shorter than Pacek.

Pitching is Pacek’s favorite thing to do, saying that was even the case when he was playing basketball and, for a brief time in elementary school, football. He was spotted by a Central Michigan baseball coach while at a camp at Chatham University, which ultimately resulted in him signing with the Mid-American Conference school in December.

Zane has sizable goals in the sport, which includes playing in the major leagues and winning a World Series.

If he does either, he won’t be the first member of his family to do so. Pacek’s uncle, Jason Hammel, captured a World Series title with the Cubs in 2016. A 6-foot-6 right-hander, Hammel won 96 games over 13 seasons. He and Zane’s mom are siblings. The two, along with brother Bill, resided in Saxonburg when they were children before the brothers moved to Washington state to live with their father in 1994.

“Since [oldest son] Jackson and Zane were young, they wanted to be major league players,” Athena Pacek said. “They didn’t look up to anyone except their Uncle J. They said, ‘Uncle J did it, so I can do it, too.’”

Hammel, 43, has been around the sport of baseball for nearly his entire life, and said that his nephew is the biggest player he’s ever seen.

“When my brother and I left Pittsburgh, Randy Johnson was out [in Seattle]. That was probably the closest thing I’ve seen to Zane’s frame, and I think Johnson was 6-10,” Hammel recalled.

As far as super-sized pitchers go, Johnson, a five-time Cy Young winner, is the standard, while the tallest to throw a pitch and also play in the big leagues were Jon Rauch and Sean Hjelle, both 6-11. The tallest-ever college player is believed to be Frank Szczepanik, a 7-foot-2, 270-pound pitcher who played for Division II Barry University 15 years ago.

Pacek literally doesn’t come from a family of trees, but it looks like he does. The majority of the height comes from his mom’s side of the family. Athena Pacek is 6 feet tall, and her brothers stand 6-6 and 6-4. Their father was also 6-4. Zane’s dad, Corey, is 6-2, and Zane’s three siblings are also not short on height — brother Jackson, 21, is 6-4, while sisters Deianira, 16, and Leda, 14, each are 5-9.

Athena and Corey are Knoch graduates who competed on the track and field team at Grove City College, where they threw the shot put and discus. Athena said that Zane following in his parents’ footsteps would be quite difficult.

“I don’t even know if the circle in the shot put or discus would be big enough for him,” she said. “A lot of the pitching mounds aren’t even long enough for him.”

Zane also has been exceptionally tall, and absurdly so for his age. Athena has many humorous photos of Zane towering over classmates and teammates over the years. When he played Little League ball, his dad made sure to always carry Zane’s birth certificate.

“People would say, ‘Why is that coach wearing a uniform?’ Can you imagine being an 11-, 12- or 13-year-old, and the kid pitching is like 6 inches bigger than your dad?” Corey Pacek said.

Bill Stoops, Knoch’s coach for Zane’s first two years, once quipped, “If I ever want to holler at him, I need to stand on a chair.”

As Athena Pacek pointed out, this world is just not built for a person her son’s size. It’s believed that less than 3,000 people on the planet are 7 feet tall. Mom said that the family built their house, which they moved into in 2021, literally for Zane. It includes tall ceilings and 7.5-foot shower heads. Beds aren’t made for someone Zane’s size, so he sleeps diagonally on a queen bed.

Zane and his siblings all pitch in doing chores around the house, with Zane being assigned a few specific duties, such as “putting stuff up high in cabinets” and “lifting heavy stuff.”

As you might expect, this giant of a teen has a huge appetite, with the goal being to eat 4,000 calories a day. His mom said that, on a recent day, Zane devoured four chicken patties and a whole pizza — just for lunch.

Being Pacek’s size comes with many challenges.

“He’s limited on things that a lot of people never think of,” Athena said.

That includes driving. Vehicles simply aren’t designed to carry someone 7 feet, 300 pounds. Zane was unable to take driving lessons because of that, but the family did purchase him a car, one which you would not expect — a Toyota Camry.

“It’s funny because it’s the only car he fits in,” Mom said. “We thought maybe a big SUV, but he can’t even get into a truck. His knees don’t get into the door. Anything that makes you sit like it’s a chair, he can’t sit in. You can’t put the seat far enough back. The Camry design worked for him, but the other caveat is he’s also very tall from his hips to his head, so he needs to have the moonroof slid back so he has an extra inch or two of space.”

While no vehicle is perfect for him, Zane said he makes it work.

“Honestly, it’s really good. It could be better, but beggars can’t be choosers,” he said. “It gets me from point A to point B, but sometimes my legs get a little stiff.”

Pacek might be a mountain of a man and certainly is physically imposing, but his coach calls him “The Gentle Giant.” Pacek is very friendly, and Negley said that children gravitate toward him.

“One thing we did [Monday] that we started last year, the varsity kids go over and read books to the third-graders,” Negley said, “and their eyes light up when he comes over. He’s one of a kind.”

One of a kind he is, including when it comes to athletes who have graced the WPIAL over the past century-plus.

Zane plans on majoring in communications in college with a long-term goal of becoming a sports announcer. Of course, that would be after what this larger-than-life teen hopes will be a long baseball career.

“A teacher once gave the kids an assignment to write a paper on a job they wanted to have when they grew up,” Mom remembered. “He said a baseball player, and she said that was unrealistic. And Zane said, ‘Well, it’s realistic to me. I’m doing this. Who’s stopping me?’”