Jack Clark Continues to Stumble Along With Red Sox

For Jack Clark’s bat, it’s been another silent spring. One day ‘til summer and in 46 games, the Boston Red Sox’s alleged cleanup hitter had only three home runs, 22 RBI and a .212 batting average, the lowest average of the regulars.

If a slugger is going to stink, ‘tis better not to stink before the home folks. Clark hasn’t hit one home run at Fenway this season, and, as is his custom, he leads the team in strikeouts (52) and dirty looks.

Injury-prone even as a young athlete, today, at 36 and a half years old, Clark comes to the ballpark with nagging injuries and nagging doubts as he plods through the second year of a three-year, $11.2 million contract. It seemed an obscene amount of money when Clark signed. Now, 18 months later, with the best players in the game re-signing for nearly that much per year, it seems almost normal.

For Clark, an athlete in decline, so is the struggle. A man of tremendous pride and ego, Clark is frustrated when he looks in the mirror because he sees not just a swarthy, dark-stubbled face with black beetle brows, but a guy who can carry a team.

A high school team? Sure. But a major league team? Probably only for a day. As with many of us, there is a large gap between what Clark wants to be and what he is. In one of every three official at-bats, he might as well be us -- he whiffs.

The Fenway faithless have noticed. With erstwhile starter Matt Young now a peripheral bullpen figure almost too pathetic for scorn, unofficial exit polls show Clark as Sox fans’ Public Enemy No. 1 for the second spring in a row.

Is Clark totally washed up? Or is he merely consistent? Answer by August. Even the fickle can’t forget Clark’s first-year Fenway funk.

On June 6 of last season, Clark was hitting a seaso 17 homers and 51 RBI after it, to finish with 28 homers, 87 RBI and a .249 average.

This, like it or lump it, is the new Clark. Although each was with a different team, in the past three seasons in which he played in 140 or more games, Clark has been amazingly consistent -- a batting average in the .240s, 26-28 home runs and 87-94 RBI.

Watching Clark these days, even those numbers look unattainable.

As he has gotten older, Clark has missed a lot more. In none of his first 11 major league seasons did he strike out more than 95 times. In his past five seasons, he has struck out 133, 91 (in only 115 games), 145, 141 and 139 times. As a cleanup hitter, he makes a very nice windmill.

Clark struck out twice in three official plate appearances against the New York Yankees Wednesday night, with the bases loaded in the third and with a runner on in the fifth. Bill Clinton feels more welcome in Sister Souljah’s home than Clark feels at Fenway these days.

But in the seventh, Clark did the one thing he still does reasonably well -- he walked. Pinch runner Bob Zupcic replaced him. The crowd sarcastically cheered Clark as he went to the dugout. Once in the dugout, Clark flung his batting helmet onto the field. After all, what use did he have for it?

Manager Butch Hobson didn’t have Clark in the lineup Thursday night as the Red Sox and Yankees finished their four-game series. With Phil Plantier’s and Ellis Burks’ long ball bats coming alive, there is less need to play a designated hitter who doesn’t.

In Clark’s defense, his start Wednesday night was his first after missing six consecutive games with a strained rib cage muscle on his left side. He also has a sore left hip. That’s how it is when you start getting old. Your body betrays you in a dozen different ways, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

“He was swinging the bat real well before he got hurt,” Hobson said. “He has to find (his rhythm) again. The only way to find it again is to hack.”