Will Clark proves to be a thrill for Giants fans with 7 RBIs
This story was originally published on June 23, 1988
In a more perfect world, all baseball games would reach a conclusion similar to Wednesday’s game at Candlestick Park. Bases loaded, two out, full count, best hitter against best pitcher, crowd on its feet clapping, sun shining.
Certainly in Will Clark’s dream world, they would all end like this. He looks for a curveball, gets a curveball, drills it into the rightfield corner to score three runs for an 8-7 victory — his fifth, sixth, and seventh RBIs of the game.
Wednesday’s game was no dream for the Giants. It was brutally bad in spots, and that’s why they needed to score four runs in the ninth, the last three on Clark’s fourth hit, to beat San Diego.
But shoddy performances from Atlee Hammaker, Don Robinson and Candy Maldonado aside, Clark was a one-man gang with an RBI single in the first, double to left in the third, three runhomer on an 0-and-2 pitch in the fifth — all off starter Ed Whitson — and then his ninth-inning heroics.
“When I get comfortable at the plate, I get what I call the ‘Superman effect,’ ’' Clark said. “I feel I can hit anything. That’s when I have to get more disciplined at the plate, and today I was.”
Clark admitted it was a risky move to guess curveball against Padres reliever Mark Davis, because it’s easier for a hitter to adjust from a fastball to a curve than vice versa.
“It’s a gamble, but that’s my job out there. I was looking for a curveball based on what he struck me out on the other night, based on what he threw to Brett Butler and Ernie Riles with the game on the line the other night,” he said.
Said Davis, who failed to save a game for the first time in 13 opportunities, “I just pitched stupidly today.”
He entered the game with a 7-4 lead and one out in the ninth. Lance McCullers had given up a walk to Bob Brenly and a single to Jose Uribe before Davis struck out
Harry Spilman for the second out.
Butler kept the Giants alive when he slapped a single past drawn-in third baseman Randy Ready. That made it 7-5, and a walk on four pitches to Chris Speier brought Clark to the plate.
“The big play was walking Speier,” Padres right fielder Tony Gwynn said. Gwynn fielded Clark’s double in the corner, but his throw and the relay from Roberto Alomar were too late to get Speier at home. “You can’t bring Clark up there with runners on base. That’s what did us in.”
The seven RBIs, a career high for Clark, gave him 56 for the year,
second behind Houston’s Glenn Davis in the National League. His effort was just one RBI short of the San Francisco record of eight shared by Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda.
“I’m sure Will Clark made the All-Star team today if he hadn’t already made it,” Manager Roger Craig said. “He can carry the club. The only other player I’ve been around like him is Kirk Gibson. We all felt in the dugout today that he (Clark) was going to do it.
“Now that it’s over, this type of win is better for us than if Atlee had thrown a shutout. I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t pretty because I was getting tired
of looking at it. I would have felt cheated if we had lost that game the way it was going and I hadn’t said something afterward. You guys (the press) would still be waiting outside if we had lost.”
The Giants were on the brink of a three-game sweep and about to fall four games below the .500 level for the first time this season. Their plight had come about for a number of reasons. Hammaker lasted just three innings in his third start and gave up four earned runs. His major contribution was that he fielded his own wild pitch in the second inning.
The Giants’ miseries started with an unearned run in the first
as Maldonado (0 for 4) dropped Dickie Thon’s leadoff fly on the warning track for a three-base error.
Randy Bockus kept the Giants alive with four shutout innings of relief as Clark’s home run turned a 5-1 sleeper into a 5-4 contest. But Robinson surrendered two runs in the ninth, the second one scoring when Robinson dropped a routine throw at first from Clark.
“I was thinking about what I was going to say in the clubhouse,” said Craig. “Then we started pecking away.”
Then Clark canceled Craig’s speech plans altogether.