IT’S A MADD MADD WORLD. . .

Baseball lost one of its classiest gentlemen last Wednesday when Horace Clarke, the much ridiculed Yankee second baseman during the mid 1960s down years, died at age 81. A lifetime .256 hitter who never hit more than six home runs or drove in even 50 runs in a season, it was Clarke’s fate to be regarded as the symbol of the Yankees’ dimmest eras. But as Yankees’ ’60s manager Ralph Houk once said: “I know I got a lot of criticsm for playing Horace Clarke as much as I did, but he was a lot better ballplayer than anyone ever gave him credit for. He did a lot of things good, just nothing great, and that was his problem.” For his part, Clarke, a native of the Virgin Islands, never complained about the derision he took, instead maintaining he was a proud Yankee who loved playing. A few days before the Yankees traded him to the Padres in 1974, Clarke volunteered to warm up the Yankee pitchers for the Mayor’s Trophy Game against the Mets, prompting Yankee teammate Roy White to remark: “What kind of 10-year veteran does that?” That was Horace Clarke.