Clark becomes legend in debut
On this date, April 8: ‘The Natural’ hits a home run off Ryan in his first at-bat
One pitch. That’s all it took during Will Clark’s first major league at-bat for people to recognize the Giants rookie was something else.
Then, two pitches later, Clark used his picturesque swing to forcefully announce his big league arrival. He drilled a nearly-100 mph Nolan Ryan fastball over the center field fence, becoming the 53rd player in major league history to homer in his first career at-bat.
But it really wasn’t that pitch Clark sent soaring over the fence 400 feet away at the Astrodome on April 8, 1986 that gave us the truest indication of what the kid from Louisiana would deliver as a major leaguer.
For someone who came into pro baseball already carrying the nickname “The Natural,” his ability to become a six-time All-Star and hit .303 with 284 home runs over a 15-year career was something we could almost see coming.
No, the essence of who Will Clark turned out to be as a player was revealed when he watched the fire-balling Ryan open the atbat by spinning a curveball over for a called strike.
The precocious 22-year-old 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 careerlong, self-assured, 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 I hit it, it made a wonderful sound. That’s all I can tell you. It was a wonderful sound,” Clark said in an interview with NBC Sports Bay Area four years ago. “The ball went out and I just floated around the bases. Touched home plate and I remember pointing to my family in the stands.”
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.’ “
Nonetheless, Ryan came to realize Clark was someone who wouldn’t be intimidated. Clark routinely got the best of the Hall of Fame pitcher during their battles, with a .333 average (12 hits in 36 at-bats) and a whopping six home runs.
During Ryan’s decorated 27-year career featuring a record 5,714 strikeouts and seven no-hitters, no batter hit more home runs off him than Clark.
When Clark left the Giants to join the Rangers in 1994, Ryan had just retired and joined Texas as a special adviser. Ryan’s role meant he was frequently in the clubhouse during the five seasons Clark played there. That meant the two men had plenty of opportunities to discuss what happened on Opening Night in 1986.
“He never would once talk to me,” Clark told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He avoided me like the plague. That’s the old-school mentality, hitters and pitchers. I completely understood it.”
Or maybe Clark has just rubbed him the wrong way all these years?
Also on this date ...
2019: Kevin Pillar hit the Giants’ first grand slam in two years when his second-inning 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, 2017also against the Padres.
2008: Tara VanDerveer and the Stanford Cardinal lose 64-48 to 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.