Will Clark is Tough As Nails On The Field, But There's Another Side To The O's First Baseman

It's a little after 7 a.m. on a cloudless Saturday morning in Fort Lauderdale, and Will Clark already is at the ballpark. Just 10 hours earlier he had been playing for the Orioles in a Grapefruit League game against Montreal in Jupiter, about an hour's drive up the Atlantic coast. He had punched out two hits in the contest, and then, after being removed from the game by manager Ray Miller, Clark spent half an hour running in the outfield, getting his 35-year-old legs in shape for another season, his 14th in the major leagues.

Clark got back to Fort Lauderdale that evening at about 11 p.m. So what is he doing at the ballpark so early the next day, a full six hours prior to another exhibition game, this one against the Mets?

“I like to be at the ballpark,” he says. “If I need to get things done, I get them done early instead of late. When I was a young player, if you were late, they fined you. So I don't want to be late.”

But 7 a.m.? Following a night game on the road? In the exhibition season? It must be true, what they say about Will Clark. He must eat, sleep and breathe baseball. He must be a true “gamer,” as Cal Ripken describes him, an old-school ballplayer whose entire life is baseball, who plays the game tough and eats nails for breakfast. After all, that's the reputation Clark earned during the seven years he played first base for San Francisco and the five he tacked on with Texas.

But as with many reputations, it's not quite true. Sure, Clark plays intensely and loves to win. And he does, as advertised, not hesitate to put down a teammate who, he believes, is not giving 100 percent to the game. But life is more than baseball to Clark, and there is a softer, lighter side to the Louisiana native, one that his new Orioles teammates are beginning to learn.

“I like baseball a lot when I'm here,” he says in the Orioles' Fort Lauderdale clubhouse. “But if you don't have your non-baseball time, it would drive you up the wall. When I leave the ballpark, I'm not Will-the-ballplayer any more. I'm Will-a-daddy, or Will-a-husband. And I'm an outdoorsman. I love to hunt and fish. When I'm not with the family, that's generally what I wind up doing.”

At the park, Clark does a lot more than ride other players. In fact, on a notably quiet Orioles team, he is the most loquacious player - by far. Before Clark's arrival, batting practice for the Orioles often was about as noisy as a library. The only sound you were likely to hear was the crack of wood lacing into the ball. Clark, though, is like a magpie. He rarely stops talking. He teases his teammates or coach Marv Foley, who throws up batting practice pitches. He seems to have a comment for every ball hit during practice. He's intense in games, but he enjoys having a good time, observes Ripken. Clark likes playing practical jokes. He has a sense of humor. He's not a reincarnation of Ty Cobb. He sees baseball as a game, not a war.

“I like to carry a swagger,” Clark says. “I'm also a big practical joker. And I like being loud. People have a much better time if there's laughing and giggling.”

Clark can be very serious on the field, but he also appreciates the fun side of the sport.

“I enjoy playing the game,” Clark acknowledges. “I enjoy the challenge every day, of going out there and bettering the odds. And I also enjoy, basically, being a part of history. There's not a lot of people that are able to do my job, and there were a lot of people who came before me and prepared me for the major leagues - Hall of Famers and people like that. Those guys paved the way for everybody else coming up behind them.”

The Orioles' first baseman began playing ball when he was about eight. Back then, he took the game casually, rather than as a matter of life or death. “I was a normal kid, playing Little League and all that sort of stuff,” he recalls. “I wasn't the kind of kid, and my dad wasn't the kind of dad, who pressured his kid into being a ballplayer. He just said, ‘Do you want to play some baseball?' and I said, 'Yeah.'”

It wasn't until Clark was a junior or senior in high school that it became apparent to him that baseball could be more than a game for him - it also could become a means to making a living. “Every year I played baseball I got a little bit better at it,” he says, “and my love of the game became a little bit more every year.”

He was good enough to get a baseball scholarship at Mississippi State University, where he played alongside ex-Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, with whom he switched teams over the offseason, and with whom he has carried on a rivalry that is less than friendly.

Clark was an All-American at Mississippi State in 1984-85, and in the latter year received the Golden Spikes Award as the nation's top college player, after he hit .420 with 25 home runs and 77 RBIs in 65 games. That June he was drafted by the Giants.

Baseball might be a fun for Clark, but he has learned to put the game in perspective. Two events in his life have made Clark realize that baseball is only a game.

The first occurred in 1989, the year he helped lead the Giants to the World Series, hitting .333 with 111 RBIs and 104 runs scored. It was Clark's only World Series thus far, and the only Series disrupted by an earthquake. A quake struck just moments before the Giants and cross-bay Oakland A's were to begin the World Series.

“I guess you could say I've had a shift in my priorities ever since the earthquake of 1989,” he explains. “I still have fun with baseball, and I still am very serious on the field, but away from the field, baseball's not one of my priorities. You had nowhere to go when the ground started shaking. It was not only a weird feeling, it was also a very scary feeling. When the ground started shaking, you had nowhere to go - nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”

The ground beneath him shook in another frightening way for Clark this winter when his wife, Lisa, was diagnosed with a hole in her heart.

“It definitely was one of the scariest things I've experienced,” he says. “It was something that just sort of popped up. We found out that she had a hole in her heart on a Friday, and on Wednesday she had surgery. A lot of things happened in the span of a few days. The doctor said if she got it squared away then, she wouldn't have any complications for the rest of her life, but if they let it go, she could eventually have a problem.”

Going to spring training shortly after his wife had undergone heart surgery was not an easy thing for Clark.

“It was tough leaving her, knowing that she was healing but she wasn't 100 percent,” he says. “Yet, at the same time, she told me to go. She said she was going to be okay and had plenty of family members watching out for her - her mom and dad, my mom and dad. And she made a full recovery.” So full, in fact, that she was permitted to join Clark in Florida after waiting four weeks for clearance from her doctors to be able to fly on an airplane. “She's doing great now,” says Clark.

So is Clark, who had a good spring training, who didn't have trouble switching to a new team and environment, and who looks forward to playing in hitter-friendly Camden Yards.

He will continue to be one of the first players to come to the ballpark every day and one of the last to leave. He will continue to enjoy playing the game of baseball. And he will continue being grateful for the opportunity to play in the major leagues and to have successfully endured an earthquake and his wife's serious illness.

“I definitely think that you're in a special position,” he says of the good fortune he has had to be a big league baseball player.