Will “The Thrill” Clark

Some guys you root for. Will Clark you kind of belonged to. He showed up in 1986 with eye black smeared halfway down his cheeks, a swing that looked like it was drawn by hand, and a mouth that never once stopped running, and for eight years he was the reason a lot of us kept making the drive out to Candlestick even when the wind was trying to take your hat into the bay.

He was a New Orleans kid, born March 13, 1964, who grew up in Gentilly and broke Rusty Staub's single season home run record at Jesuit High as a junior. The Royals drafted him in the fourth round in 1982 and he turned them down. He didn't think he was ready. So he went to Mississippi State instead, and that's where the legend really starts.

At State he hit alongside Rafael Palmeiro, and the two of them were Thunder and Lightning, which is a great nickname for two guys who couldn't stand each other. Clark played for the U.S. team at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and led that club at .429 over the five game tournament at Dodger Stadium. In 1985 he won the Golden Spikes Award as the best amateur player in the country, took the Bulldogs to the College World Series, and made the all tournament team. Then the Giants took him second overall. He homered in his first pro at bat at Fresno, because of course he did.

Nobody expected him to make the big club out of spring training in 1986. He was a non roster invite. Roger Craig just couldn't find a reason to take him out of the lineup, and Clark beat out 14 year veteran Dan Driessen for the job. On April 8 in the Astrodome he took his first big league swing against Nolan Ryan and hit it 420 feet into the center field seats. Bob Brenly started calling him the Thrill not long after, and it stuck forever. An elbow injury from a collision with Andres Galarraga cost him almost two months, and he still finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year vote.

Then 1987 happened. Clark hit .308 with 35 homers and 91 RBIs, the Giants grabbed first place in August and never let go, and San Francisco won its first division title since 1971. He hit .360 in the NLCS against the Cardinals. We lost that series in seven and I'm still a little mad about it. In 1988 he led the National League with 109 RBIs and 100 walks, made his first All Star team, and finished fifth in the MVP voting for the second straight year.

And 1989. Him and Kevin Mitchell, the Pacific Sock Exchange. Clark hit .333 with 23 homers and 111 RBIs, led the league with 104 runs, and lost the batting title to Tony Gwynn on the final day of the season, in San Diego, with the Padres crowd booing him. He finished second in the MVP race to Mitchell. Then he went to Wrigley and played the best five games I've ever seen a Giant play in October: 13 hits in 20 at bats, two homers, the pennant clinching single off Mitch Williams, NLCS MVP. The World Series against the A's was a mess. The earthquake hit before Game 3, he was fighting tonsillitis, and the A's swept us. Doesn't change what he did to the Cubs.

In January 1990 the Giants made him the highest paid player in baseball, four years and $15 million. Al Rosen said he played like a Hall of Famer. Then his body started fighting him. He played all of 1990 on a left foot with Morton's neuroma and didn't tell anybody but the trainer, which is the most Will Clark thing imaginable. They fixed the foot and the tonsils that winter, and in 1991 he hit .301 with 29 homers and 116 RBIs, led the league in slugging and total bases, won the Gold Glove he'd openly said he wanted more than any hitting award, and took home his second Silver Slugger.

He made the All Star team every year from 1988 through 1992, voted in as the starter at first base every time. He also set a San Francisco record with 320 straight games played from September 1987 to August 1989. The power dipped in 1992 and 1993 as pitchers worked around him and the injuries piled up, and in 1993, with Barry Bonds in left, the Giants won 103 games and still missed the playoffs on the last day. That was his last season in orange and black. The Giants offered three years at less than $15 million. He wanted to stay. He said so out loud. It didn't happen.

Texas gave him five years and $30 million to replace, who else, Palmeiro. He hit .329 in 1994 and made a sixth All Star team, this time for the American League. He played through a broken left elbow in 1995, hit .326 in 1997, and drove in 102 runs in 1998 as the Rangers won the AL West for the second time in three years. Then Texas brought Palmeiro back and Clark went to Baltimore, partly to be near Johns Hopkins for his son Trey, who'd been diagnosed with autism. He got his 2,000th hit as an Oriole on June 15, 1999.

The last act is the one people forget. At the 2000 trade deadline Baltimore sent him to St. Louis to cover for an injured Mark McGwire, and at 36 he hit .345 with 12 homers in 51 games. He hit a three run homer off Tom Glavine in the NLDS and led the Cardinals at .412 in the NLCS. Then he walked away. He could still hit and he knew it. He went home to help Lisa raise the kids, and he's been a loud voice for the autism community ever since.

Cooperstown never came. He got 4.4 percent of the writers' vote in 2006 and fell off the ballot after one try, and the Today's Game Era committee passed on him for the 2017 class. The Bay Area took care of him anyway. The Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame inducted him in 2007, he went up on the Giants Wall of Fame with the inaugural class in 2008, and on July 30, 2022, the Giants retired number 22 at Oracle Park and hung it between Monte Irvin's 20 and Willie Mays' 24. He called that day his Hall of Fame. I'll take his word for it.

He never really left, either. After years advising the Diamondbacks' coaches in spring training and serving as a Giants community ambassador from 2009 to 2015, he's listed in 2026 as a Special Assistant in the Giants' executive office. Every so often you'll catch him at the ballpark, and somebody in the next section will start in about the grand slam at Wrigley like it was last week.

Clutch is a word people throw around. With Clark it's just the box score. Put him in October against the Cubs in 1989 and he went 13 for 20, homered twice off Greg Maddux in Game 1, drove in six in that one game, and then in Game 5, tied at one in the eighth inning with the bases loaded and two outs, he took Mitch Williams up the middle for the pennant. You don't get a bigger at bat than that in the old ballpark, and he didn't flinch.

It wasn't one week, either. The first time he ever swung the bat in the big leagues he took Nolan Ryan deep, and he kept beating Ryan for years, six homers off him, more than anybody. He hit .360 in the 1987 NLCS and homered in the Game 2 shutout in St. Louis. Thirteen years later, nearly done, he hit a three run homer off Tom Glavine in the first inning of an NLDS game to flip a 2 to 0 deficit. The big stage never shrank him. It seemed to wake him up.

And I'll say the homer part out loud. Yes, the 1989 World Series was rough for him. He was sick, the earthquake had turned the whole Bay Area upside down, and the A's were a buzzsaw. I don't care. When the Giants needed one swing to get back to the World Series for the first time since 1962, he was the guy at the plate, and he got it done.