Clark becomes legend in debut
Ryan open the atbat by spinning a curveball over for a called strike.
The precocious 22-yearold looked out at the legendary pitcher and broke into a grin. Clark then started to giggle before jokingly asking Astros catcher Mark Bailey, “Why’s he throwing me a curveball?”
That moment of brashness was the beginning of Clark’s career-long, selfassured, often cocky behavior that alerted all that no moment was too big for him. It was the kind of attitude that led Hall of Famer Joe Morgan to once say of Clark: “He carries his personality to the plate. He just knows he’s going to get a hit.”
The image of Clark in the batter’s box throughout his eight years as a Giant is still etched in our memory. The familiar tilting at the waist, the methodical wagging of his bat off his shoulder, and the scowl on his eye black-dripped face all served to give pitchers an uneasy sense of foreboding. Then, in an instant, came the synchronized thrusting forward of his body, timed perfectly with the release of his back foot that triggered a perfectly majestic looping, uppercut swing.
For Clark, it was a formula for success from the very beginning.
In that ‘86 opener when
Bailey dryly told the Giants’ bold youngster he and Ryan were “just switching things up,” by throwing a curveball, Clark took a breath. Then he waited for what he’d been expecting ever since manager Roger Craig wrote his name in the lineup as the No. 2 hitter on Opening Night.
“I’m gonna look for his fastball because I’ve never seen anything that fast in my life,” Clark admitted after the game.
Ryan’s 1-1 fastball away and over the plate was exactly what Clark was hoping to see. He connected and “The Natural” would soon became “The Thrill.”
When Clark got to the dugout his teammates joined his 80-100 family members at the Astrodome in celebration.
“My teammates (were) giving me high-fives. I’m sitting down there and my heart’s beating about a thousand miles a minute,” Clark said. “And this calm came over me. Chili Davis was sittin’ to my left, and I look at Chili and I go, ‘He’s gonna drill me next time up, right? And Chili goes, ‘Oh, hell yeah.’ “
As predicted, on his next at-bat Clark had to duck out of the way of a fastball Ryan whizzed past his chin. Clark laughed to himself the purpose of it was to “just give me a little warning that (he’s) still Nolan
Ryan out here.’”
Also on this date ...
2019: Kevin Pillar hit the Giants’ first grand slam in two years when his secondinning blast against the Padres helped San Francisco beat San Diego 7-2. The slam was San Francisco’s first at Oracle Park in three years. Before Pillar’s blast, Brandon Belt had been the last Giant to hit a grand slam — on April 7, 2017 also against the Padres.
2008: Tara VanDerveer and the Stanford Cardinal lose 64-48to Pat Summitt and the Tennessee Volunteers in the championship game of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
1991: The A’s became the first Major League Baseball team to play in an outdoor stadium that bans smoking as the Oakland Coliseum became a smoke-free zone. 1984: Former San Jose State star Juli Inkster of Santa Cruz won the first of her seven major LPGA titles by beating Pat Bradley in a sudden-death playoff to win the Nabisco Dinah Shore Women’s Golf tournament in Rancho Mirage.
1966: Raiders head coach and general manager Al Davis is named the American Football League’s commissioner. The 36-year-old Davis was instrumental in the league’s merger with the NFL later that year.