YOUNG DREAMS
Chris Mullin and Will Clark meet Bay Area faithful starving for winners This column was originally published on June 21, 1985.
Will Clark and Chris Mullin got a look at the Bay Area. They showed up with fresh faces and three-piece suits. They showed up with accents you could cut with an unused playoff ticket. They showed up with an adolescent naiveté, and wide eyes which in 21 short years have been virtually blind to disappointment.
Won’t they be surprised to see the wide eyes of Bay Area sports fans, glazed with frustration, staring back at them?
For Clark, the hard-hitting first baseman from Mississippi State whose signing the Giants announced Thursday at Candlestick Park, the effect will be somewhat muted. The fans’ hopeful gaze will have a difficult time seeing all the way to Fresno, where San Francisco’s No. 1 pick will begin his professional baseball career today, playing for $700 a month.
But the expectations will be no different than those earmarked for Mullin, the spectacularly creative guard drafted in the first round by the Golden State Warriors. Though Mullin, who met the local media at the Coliseum Arena, will start at the top — both in salary and level of competition — his mission will be the same: Turn a corpse into a contender.
Can they possibly realize what they’re letting themselves in for?
Does Clark know that the Giants are light years removed from the success of the MaysMcCovey-Marichal glory era? Does he have any idea of the machinations, political and otherwise, currently at work to keep the Giants in
San Francisco — or move them to the dark side of the moon?
Certainly he can read the standings. And for someone with that ability, he looked remarkably cheerful Thursday afternoon.
Of course that was when he was talking, not about the Giants, but about Eddie Murray’s batting practice display prior to last season’s All-Star Game at Candlestick Park. Clark, in town with the U.S. Olympic team that week, saw Murray’s show in person.
“That was great! You look at something like that,” he said wondrously in his Deep South twang, “and you go, ‘Whooooooooa!’ “
And how long before Clark has Giant fans searching their thesaurus for similar superlatives? He grows pensive. Perhaps the light bulb is finally going on inside his head.
“Actually, I haven’t really thought about it. Two or three years. Or less.”
First there are wooden bats to adjust to, bus trips to take, instructional leagues to attend. Oddibe McDowell, an Olympic teammate of Clark’s, is currently attempting to light a fire under the pathetic Texas Rangers. Clark considers the parallel and tries to emphasize the positive, while putting reality on hold.
“It’s very encouraging,” he says. “It shows that organizations are willing to move ‘em up fast.” And, he hints, it could happen to him. “Hey, in the three years at Mi-zippi State, the average steadily rose.”
So did the stock of one Chris Mullin. He’s expected to have an immediate impact on the Golden State Warriors, who last made the NBA playoffs eight drafts ago.
“Truthfully,” Mullin says truthfully, “I’m glad I’m here. I’m going to start (my career) here, and finish here.”
At one time, Purvis Short was just glad to be here. And J.B. Carroll after him. And Lester Conner after him. But Mullin knows nothing of this. And why should we spoil his first visit by filling him in?
“The only thing I know about them (the Warriors) is when they came back east I saw them play against the Knicks on TV,” he said. “They want to make some changes. They want me to be a part of that, and I want to be a part of it.”
The change, if you haven’t detected the pattern by now, is from loser to winner. Pete Maravich wasted practically his entire career trying to precipitate just such an upheaval in Atlanta and New Orleans.
“There are two ways to look at it,” says Mullin, a Brooklyn resident, in his dese-dem-dose dialect. “I don’t feel I could be in a better situation. Only good things can happen.”
Right now, his outlook is being echoed by a region of fans to whom disappointment has been a dietary staple for nearly a decade, with the exception of the 49ers. Adrift in a sea of hopelessness and despair, those fans have now been thrown two ropes — Will Clark and Chris Mullin.
Suddenly, there is an excess of wide eyes and heady optimism. “I wish practice started tomorrow,” said Mullin. So do his new fans. So do Clark’s new fans.
Welcome aboard, men. No pressure here.