Will Clark Has Been Making It Happen for Giants

It happened almost eight years ago, but Ron Polk remembers the moment as if it were yesterday.

It was the day a slender, brash high school junior named Will Clark made the five-hour drive from New Orleans to Starkville, Miss. He had come to tell Polk, the baseball coach at Mississippi State University, how much he’d like to be a Bulldog.

Virtually every college coach has this kind of story to tell, how they went to scout a running back and discovered the best lineman on earth, how they flew thousands of miles to see a certain power forward when a better one played 20 miles away.

Ron Polk’s story is about Will Clark, about how Polk was sitting in his office one day and the guy who is today generally recognized as the game’s best and most feared hitter pulled up a chair and made a sales pitch.

“He basically recruited us as much as we recruited him,” Polk said. “He said he wanted to major in engineering, and we have a good engineering school. I’d heard of him, but really didn’t know that much. I made some calls and talked to some scouts and found out that a lot of people liked him.”

The recommendations were good, but not great, and the only time Polk went to see for himself, Clark drew three walks and swung the bat once. Still, something told him to find the kid a scholarship.

“I liked the way he carried himself,” Polk said. “Even then, you could see the fire.”

Less than a decade later, almost everyone has seen the fire that has ignited the San Francisco Giants and pushed them into their first World Series in 27 years. Not just any World Series, but a special one--Oakland vs. San Francisco, beginning with Game 1 at the Oakland Coliseum on Saturday night.

It’s the first time in 33 years and only the 16th time ever that two cities from a single metropolitan area have met in the World Series. It hasn’t happened since 1956 when the Dodgers and Yankees split the fans in New York, and like that one, this Series will be a contrast of styles and traditions.

The A’s win because their starting pitching is strong and deep and because their bullpen may be the best in history, from Todd Burns in the middle to Dennis Eckersley at the end. The A’s also win because their batting order is easily the best in the American League, from Ricky Henderson and Carney Lansford at the top to Jose Canseco, Dave Parker, Dave Henderson and Mark McGwire in the middle. If ever there was a team without a noticeable weakness, it’s the A’s.

The Giants are different. They have a starting staff that at times has looked to be worn out, and with a batting order that’s strong at the top and middle and weak at the bottom.

What makes the Giants special, though, are a few special individuals--their 40-year-old ace, Rick Reuschel; their home run champion, Kevin Mitchell; and their powerful young third baseman, Matt Williams.

And Will Clark.

Say hello to a player whose time in the sun may be more than the 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol said everybody would have.

A player who now appears capable of singlehandedly changing a series, who has just strung together five of the best pressure performances ever--13 for 20 (.650) with two home runs, eight RBI and 24 total bases in helping the Giants defeat the Chicago Cubs in the National League playoffs. He began the series by going four for four, homering twice and driving in six runs in Game 1.

His only single-hit game was Game 2, which, not coincidentally, was the Giants’ only loss. He returned to Candlestick Park and went two for four in Game 3, three for four in Game 4 and three for four in Game 5. In his last at-bat, he lined a game-winning bases-loaded single into center field.

The Cubs later would say they knew something about pitching to him. Something.

“Oh, he can be pitched to,” reliever Les Lancaster said. “It’s just a matter of getting the ball there. If you don’t put it in the right spot, he makes you pay. That’s what separates good and great hitters. A good hitter will occasionally miss a mistake bad. Will Clark didn’t miss any pitches this series.”

Mitchell, Clark’s teammate and pal, said simply: “Will Clark is not human. Someone made him.”

So now everyone will want to know Will Clark’s story, how he grew up in a middle-class New Orleans neighborhood, attended Mississippi State for three years, starred on the ’84 U.S. Olympic team, was the third pick in the 1985 baseball draft, played all of 71 games in the minors and homered off Nolan Ryan in his first big league at-bat.

There’ll be stories about his Type A personality. How he became a disciple of fitness guru Mackie Shilstone and spends four to five hours a day in the weight rooms and batting cages around New Orleans. How he keeps books and video tapes on opposing pitchers.

How he will tell off a teammate then tell off himself. How he still holds Mississippi State records for slamming his helmet and bat to the ground. How gaining some measure of control over his emotions has seemed to be one of the last pieces of this puzzle.

He seems to have blossomed in the public eye this summer, but for most of his first three seasons in the majors, reporters were occasionally afraid to go near him, much less pry into his batting stance or his personal life.

That has changed. He’s relaxed and articulate and has been available for hours of interviews in this postseason rush. He answers every question with a smile, will usually call the reporter by name and can be seen all over The City by the Bay, dining at this hot place, kibitzing with Huey Lewis, making a public service announcement for this or that good cause.

“He’s not lacking for confidence,” his manager, Roger Craig, said admiringly.

A few months after his 25th birthday, Will “The Thrill” Clark, aka, “The Natural,” seemingly is not lacking for much of anything.

“I’m telling you, he’s the best baseball player I’ve ever seen,” Giants catcher Terry Kennedy said. “I’ve seen pitchers make perfect pitches on him, and he lines ‘em into the corner for a double.”

Teammate Mike Krukow, recalling the climatic scene in Game 5, said, “The script was by Bernard Malamud (who wrote “The Natural”). It’s unbelievable what this guy does in clutch situations. It just seems scenarios are written for him.”

A day earlier, teammate Dave Dravecky meant about the same thing when he said of Clark: “I’ve never seen anyone with so much natural ability. His instincts and concentration, his aggressiveness. He’s just the best player in the game.”

Clark’s two-run single off Mitch Williams won Game 5, but it didn’t finish his work. When reliever Steve Bedrosian got into ninth-inning trouble, he stepped off the mound and found himself face to face with Clark, who was screaming, “This is your ballgame!” and other words of encouragement.

“I like that,” Bedrosian said. “Mike Schmidt used to yell the same thing when I played in Philadelphia. I felt like, ‘Come on, Will, yell at me some more.’ ”

An interview with Will Clark moves at a quick clip. His answers come in staccato bursts and bounce from subject to subject.

He’s the man who stands beside first base wiggling his glove and hands, tugging at his cap and constantly re-arranging the infield dirt. He cannot bring himself to stay in the same mental or physical locale very long.

“I start thinking about that day’s pitcher, I’d say, the morning of the game,” he said. “It might be earlier. I’ll look in my book or maybe look at a video tape if there’s something I want to check on. I’ll usually get three or four other opinions. You need to go up there with some idea about what the pitcher wants to do with you. You know what he got you out with in the past or what you hit. You weigh all those things. But the final decision is mine.”

His left-handed swing is so smooth and sweet that it has evoked comparisons to Ted Williams, especially with the way he seems to stride into the ball and hit off the front foot. On his game-winning hit in Game 5, television replays showed his back foot off the ground, something not every hitting coach would smile about.

Still, the basics are the same, and what people cannot teach is quickness and coordination.

“His hitting ability is not from brute strength or anything like that,” Giants hitting coach Dusty Baker said. “It’s from quickness and from being able to adjust. When he’s hot, which he is now, there’s just no way to pitch him.”

Clark said as much after Game 5, adding: “Right now the ball just looks real good. When that happens, you’ve got a lot of confidence that you can walk up there and get the job done. It just so happened I had a bunch of chances in crucial situations.

“My concentration level is extremely high--I’m locked up. My concentration is so high that no matter what is going on, everything else is blocked out. There were 62,000 fans yelling and screaming, and the only thing I was worried about was baseball. When I came up that last time, I couldn’t even tell you what Williams’s eyes looked like or if he had a beard. I’m just thinking about that ball, that’s all.”

He says he’s not thinking about how the National League playoffs became his showcase or about how another week like this past week could make him very, very rich and very, very famous. He knows the meaning of all this, and it’s Polk, his former college coach, who knows what the results could be.

“He’s not finished,” he said. “He’s a guy who likes the full houses and the pressure situations. You take a nothing game in July with 5,000 people in the stands, and you’ve got a chance against him. But you make it count for something, and there’s no one like him.”

Clark smiles and shrugs, mumbles something in a voice that is naturally high-pitched and quick, with just a hint of French Quarter stirred in.

“This is not the time to think about what might be,” he said. “This is the time to go out and do it. You can relive it later.”