In a Scrape

Please, no traffic jam ... please, no traffic jam ...

The moment he left his South Bay apartment on that April afternoon, Jack Clark began to pray.

But like so many of his best efforts this season, it didn’t seem to matter.

He pulled onto the Harbor Freeway and into a traffic jam. Miles of gleaming metal, thick exhaust, screeching brakes, a concrete closet.

With everyone traveling north, Clark’s head began traveling south, into the nauseous depths of vertigo.

The road began to spin. The brake lights wildly flickered. There was no room to pull off. There was nowhere to stop.

His car inching along, Clark stuck his head out the window and vomited on the pavement.

Thirty minutes later, the Dodger hitting coach pulled into a place filled with struggling bats and questioning media and angry fans.

He carefully pulled on a jersey over aching broken ribs. He gently placed his cap over a scarred and numb scalp.

He walked into the Dodger Stadium tunnel to pitch batting practice, but his broken finger couldn’t grip the ball, and his dislocated collarbone forced him to throw it underhanded.

He walked to the outside batting cage to give tips even though he could barely swing a bat.

By the time the game started, his head was spinning again, so he retired to the manager’s office, where he turned off the lights and lay on the couch and prayed again for relief.

A doctor came first. Clark was sent home. But he couldn’t drive there. As the game continued, a clubhouse attendant was summoned to the parking lot, where he climbed into Clark’s car and took him home.

Once there, the exhausted, embattled Clark slept sitting up for a couple of hours before trying it all again the next day.

And how’s your summer?

*

They scraped him off the road.

Those were the precise words of the cop who met Jack Clark’s girlfriend in the hospital after the motorcycle accident that would change everything.

“I looked at her like, ‘They scraped him off the road?” Jessica Beck remembered. “I thought, this is bad.”

In some ways, nearly four months later, they are still scraping him off the road.

The Dodgers’ tough-guy hitting coach has endured the hardest season of his life, struggling to feel normal after a life-threatening accident on the eve of opening day, scuffling with the worst hitting team in the league, and now fighting with his infamous inability to mince words.

Dodger officials met with Clark last week after he was quoted as saying the team was experiencing clubhouse problems, their lineup was worse than that of the last-place San Diego Padres, and that he would agree to leave if it helped.

All of that was true. But in the eyes of the Dodger spin doctors, none of it helped, and there was talk that Clark would be fired.

As unfair as it might seem under the circumstances, that still might happen. But understand this.

Being canned won’t be the worst thing that has happened to Jack Clark this summer.

“I don’t look like I’m in pain,” Clark said recently, staring expressionless toward the field. “Looks are deceiving.”

*

The resume of a career spanning 18 seasons and countless big-game moments requires only two lines.

In 1985, Jack Clark hit a home run that marked the low point of Tom Lasorda’s managerial career.

In 2000, Lasorda recommended Clark for a job as a Dodger hitting instructor.

Clark has always been stronger than grudges, bigger than bygones, larger than life.

He hit home runs. He drove fast cars. He lost lots of money. He spoke his mind.

From the moment he became the big league hitting coach three seasons ago, stepping in front of booing Dodger fans who have never forgiven, he was perfect for a team in need of fearlessness.

“Jack Clark lives in a different world,” longtime friend Tom Spitzer said.

When he returned to baseball after seven years of retirement, he wanted to learn about managing from the ground floor, so he began as the boss of the River City (Mo.) Rascals in the independent Frontier League.

One season, 20-hour bus rides, two massive brawls, including one in which the opposing manager was led away in handcuffs.

“I wanted to learn the hard way, the correct way,” Clark said. “I wanted everyone to know I would pay my dues.”

Then he was hired by the Dodgers and sent to Class-A San Bernardino, where he spent the summer living in a cheap hotel while helping the kids lead all California League playoff teams in average, home runs and runs scored.

“I’ll do what it takes, I always have,” Clark said. “You got something you need, put it on my shoulders.”

He came to the big leagues in 2001, the beds became softer, the buses became airplanes, but Clark wouldn’t change.

He showed up early and challenged the hitters to join him. He prodded laid-back types such as Shawn Green until, after last year’s monster season, Green actually penned him a thank-you note.

And he still rode those motorcycles.

He would ride with Darren Dreifort to the stadium. He would ride through town on his days off.

One morning last winter, he rode from his Phoenix-area home to Green’s wedding in Laguna Beach. Packed his tuxedo behind the seat. Changed in the hotel bathroom.

“I have to be myself,” Clark said.

“He gets it,” Green said.

But then, on March 30, he got it.

Driving to the Dodgers’ pre-opening day workout at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, not wearing a helmet, Clark was thrown off his new motorcycle after colliding with a spinning car that had just been hit by a minivan.

Paramedics pulled him from underneath another car. When the Dodgers saw him in the hospital several hours later, they thought he would die.

“I must admit, I looked at him and cried,” Manager Jim Tracy said.

He had suffered six broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, busted finger, broken teeth, severe cuts, huge scrapes and, worst of all, a Grade 3 concussion, the most severe of its kind.

“If it wasn’t somebody as big and as strong as him, this might have killed him,” said Stan Johnston, the Dodger trainer and former rodeo bull rider.

Oh yeah?

Well, three days after the accident, Clark was out of the hospital.

Two weeks later, he was back to work.

“I was really surprised,” Green said.

“A normal person would not have come back,” Johnston said.

Clark said the post-concussion vertigo and constant rib pain were overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and concern.

“I felt like some of our guys were left stranded by me,” Clark said. “We had made some real progress out of spring training. I wanted to get back there.”

The doctors said he could return to work as long as he could stand the discomfort. They had no idea he could stand so much.

He returned to work even though he couldn’t sleep because of the pain and could sometimes barely stand because of the vertigo.

He returned to work even though, trying to drive across the street from his apartment during one day off, he was forced to turn around at the stoplight because he was so dizzy.

He found then-Dodger outfielder Jason Romano sitting by his apartment pool, threw him his keys, and asked Romano to run his errand.

“It was tough in the beginning, but I know what I can take,” Clark said. “I’m doing what a man does. I’m doing my job.”

Clark said the early-season symptoms have mostly dissipated, including the vertigo, leaving him only with general soreness, although he still feels funny on airplanes.

“I get on the plane and I don’t move from my seat, I don’t get up for the bathroom or anything,” he said. “I sit there and look straight and wait to get there.”

Clark’s ultimate destination this season is still uncertain. He could be the inspirational hitting coach for a playoff team. He could be just another Dodger scapegoat.

Wherever he’s going, he said only one thing will change.

“OK,” he said with a sigh. “From now on, I’m wearing a helmet.”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.