COMMENTARY : Will Clark Finds the Thrill Is Gone : Baseball: The Giants slugger has been a shadow of his old self. He traces his long slump to the spring lockout.

It’s been easy for Will Clark to rationalize his mini-slumps most of the season. After all, he had never known prolonged failure as a batter, so why not assume everything would work out?

“I can’t hit a ball any harder than that,” a proud Clark often said after hitting a long fly. “I hit that ball right on the screws,” he said when line drives smacked into a glove. “I’m hitting the ball as hard as last year, but they’re not dropping” was a familiar refrain.

Clark was only kidding himself, waiting for the nightmare to end. But this season is still a bad dream for the Giants’ first baseman. Despite reasonably good statistics (.287 average, 16 homers, 81 runs batted in), Clark has been a shadow of his former self and now ranks as the third-most productive hitter on the club, behind Matt Williams and Kevin Mitchell.

It has nothing to do with his four-year, $15-million contract. Clark hasn’t turned soft for lack of incentive or motivation.

Clark’s problem isn’t a fat head. There is no complacency in a man whose competitive fire burns deep. He truly believed that things would get better. They always had during an All-America college career and during his first four seasons with the Giants.

This year Clark has come up woefully short. He clearly hasn’t been as good as the statistics suggest. “The Thrill” is gone.

“You never expect a year like this,” Clark said. “I blame myself a lot for the team not doing better. If I had done better, maybe the team would have done better. If I’d done a better job, Mitch and Matt would have had a lot more RBIs. The problem has been flat-out inconsistency.”

I remarked last year that I’d never seen a Giants player enjoy a more consistent, all-around season with the bat. I maintained that Clark deserved to be the National League’s most valuable player (over Mitchell) because his .333 average was by far the highest by a player who used tough Candlestick Park for home games. Clark batted .325 at Candlestick and went down to the wire with San Diego’s Tony Gwynn in the batting race.

Clark disguised his lack of great hitting this year with a respectable start. By the end of May, however, there was a danger signal. His average had dipped to .253, unheard of for a young hitter whose swing was compared to Ted Williams’. There wasn’t alarm over his average, because when June ended, he had 14 home runs and trailed only teammate Williams in the league RBI race with 58.

Clark has only two home runs and 23 RBI in the last 2 1/2 months. Terry Kennedy has as many doubles (22) in about half as many at-bats. Virtually devoid of power and not spraying the ball to all fields as he did in 1989, Clark has only 43 extra-base hits, compared to 70 last year. Early this season Chicago Cubs manager Don Zimmer had Bill Bathe walked intentionally to face Clark in a game-winning situation. Chicago won.

Giants manager Roger Craig finds it difficult to be critical of Clark, but he reluctantly admits Will hasn’t been much of a thrill.

“This type of season isn’t something you’d expect of Will Clark,” Craig said. “You keep waiting for him to come out of it. I wish I had the answers.”

Clark batted higher than .300 every month last season and hit .340 against right-handers. This season he slumped to .209 in May and batted .277 in August. He is supposed to own right-handers, but he’s batting only .269 against them. Still, he’s at .365 with runners in scoring position and two outs and .290 overall with runners in scoring position.

“I must be doing it at the wrong time,” Clark said, “because I certainly don’t feel like I’m helping the team in the clutch. I’m surprised my stats are that good. Last year everything went right; this year everything is going wrong.”

Batting coach Dusty Baker felt a little uneasy discussing Clark’s slump.

“I’ve noticed more tension in his swing this year,” Baker said. “Last year he had a tension-free swing. Will is pressing. When you’re not doing what you’re capable of, you know it. He’s not fooling himself. He’s swinging at more bad pitches.”

Baker offered an answer: the spring-training lockout, which reduced the number of exhibition games.

“A sweet swinger like Will was hurt more than most by not having a full spring,” Baker said. “He’s a timing-type hitter who needs a full spring to get it down. He is a hand-eye coordination guy who needs a lot of at-bats to get into a groove. He’s not an awesome physical specimen, so timing is most important to him.”

Clark said: “I’ve let out my frustrations; my teammates know. Dusty’s right. Missing spring training hurt me a lot. I need to get about 110 or 120 at-bats before the season, and I got 40. I just never got going. I’m going to do things a lot differently this winter. I’m going to go home (to New Orleans), relax and stay away from people.”

And, as they say, wait till next year.