Don’t Blame Him : Giants’ Clark Offers Excuses While Rest of Team Ponders Loss

Matt Williams stared down at his fork as it pushed Mexican food across his paper plate.

“Four fastballs to hit and I just didn’t get one of them,” the San Francisco Giant third baseman said quietly. “The ball didn’t get by me, nobody throws the ball by me. I just didn’t get it. I just didn’t do my job.”

Teammate Scott Garrelts folded his arms and stared down at his shiny brown street shoes.

“Bad pitch to (Walt) Weiss, horrible pitch to Weiss,” he said. “All I’ve got to do is keep our team in the game. And I couldn’t even do that.”

Teammate Brett Butler put his chin to his chest, and shook his head.

“Like we’ve said, the first two guys in the order have got to get on base, and we didn’t do it,” he said, sighing. “OK, OK. I’ll take credit for this one.”

Then there was Will Clark. He also plays for the Giants, who lost, 5-0, to the Oakland Athletics in Game 1 of the 86th World Series at the Oakland Coliseum Saturday.

But he didn’t frown. He didn’t mope. If he found anything in the loss that could be pinned on him, he must have whispered it.

Clark didn’t sigh. He didn’t fret.

“You do what you are capable of doing,” Clark said, hands on hips, “and hopefully what you do rubs off on everyone else.”

Even in defeat, the Giant first baseman swaggers. But Saturday night, on a team that suddenly seems genuinely concerned about getting swept out of the Series by the middle of next week, that swagger did not rub off on everyone else.

“Sometimes you feel like, even when you do all you can, it’s not going to be enough,” catcher Terry Kennedy said. “Tonight was one of those times.”

Not, apparently, for Clark.

He blew the Giants’ first chance to break the game open in the first inning when, with Robby Thompson on second base and one out, he lined out on A’s starter Dave Stewart’s first pitch. But after getting two of the Giants’ five hits against Stewart, he talked about the problems of hitting when nobody else can get on base.

Clark also was involved in the A’s second run of the game, when Weiss’s second-inning grounder became stuck in his glove and Kennedy dropped his low throw while applying a tag on Terry Steinbach. But after Kennedy was charged with the error, he said it was a decent throw.

In the fifth inning, he allowed Mark McGwire’s foul pop to drop untouched. McGwire then singled up the middle. But he said first-base umpire Paul Runge blocked his path.

“It looked like our guys were a little bit rusty,” said Clark, who is hitting .625 in this postseason, with 15 hits in 24 at-bats, including four doubles, a triple, two homers and eight RBIs. “But that’s no excuse. We can’t say what-if, what-if, what-if.”

OK, so what if Butler and Thompson had not gone a collective 0 for seven?

“Hey, if the guys in front of me get on base, I don’t have to always lead off,” Clark said. “The pitcher throws differently when I’m up and there’s nobody on. The pitcher comes right at me, tries to get ahead of me right away. If I have somebody on base, then they nit-pick and try to slip one past me.”

OK, so what if, after Thompson had reached second on Stewart’s first-inning throwing error, Clark had actually gotten a base hit with a man on base?

“I hit that ball hard,” he said of his drive to left-center that was caught by Dave Henderson. “An inch here or there . . . “

OK, so what if he throws the ball properly to Kennedy. After all, at least one person didn’t think he threw it properly.

Said Kennedy: “The first problem with that play was that Will got it stuck in his glove for so long, It was like I was standing at the plate saying, ‘C’mon, c’mon, get it here!.’

“When the ball finally got to me, I had to catch it and make a tag at the same time. I didn’t have control of it, and it popped out. That happens on plays like that.”

Replied Clark: “I was having problems walking and chewing gum at the same time during that play. I slipped on the wet grass, and tried to regain my balance and throw at the same time. But it wasn’t a bad throw. It got there in time. It wasn’t perfect, but it got there in time.”

OK, so what about that foul ball?

“The umpire shielded me,” he said. “That’s why I lost it.”

If you listen to Will Clark, about the only thing bad that happened to him Saturday night was that he was booed. And even that made him smile.

“I don’t mind them booing me here--heck, this is Oakland, this ain’t San Francisco,” he said. “Remember, I was booed the last three days of the season in San Diego when I was fighting for the batting championship. Then I got booed in Chicago during the playoffs. I’m used to it.”

If you think Clark’s bravado was just an attempt to hide the frustration of feeling like he must carry the entire Giants team, one of his teammates might agree with you.

“It was hard for us tonight,” said Kevin Mitchell, who also had two hits against Stewart. (Jose Uribe had the other one.) “Sometimes you feel like we got to go up there and do something outstanding every time. You can’t always do that, but you feel you got to. And like tonight, well, we just couldn’t do enough.”

Their teammates believe them and are sorry.

“Man, we didn’t hope for a five-to-nothing score,” Williams said. “But all we can do is go out and play and hope. And we just can’t get it done every time.”

At least most of them can’t.