If you’re a Giants fan of a certain age, you remember Jack Clark fondly, a talented kid who reached the majors at 19, was an All-Star at 22 and established himself as the team’s most dangerous bat in a post-Mays world.
And you probably regard him with frustration, given he was never able to carry the Giants to the postseason, though such an act would’ve been akin to pulling a piano up Potrero Hill.
And you probably allow yourself a giggle recalling the year that he inexplicably, on a couple of occasions, came jogging in from right field thinking there were three outs when there were only two. A helpful fan took to raising placards reading “One out.” “Two out.” “Three out, come on in.”
“I had a tendency to drift off in the outfield,” he said later in his career.
These days Clark is absorbing hits instead of authoring them. According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the guy known in his heyday as The Ripper and his wife Angela recently filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Missouri. They claim to be more than half a million dollars in debt, with assets of $25,000 and a combined annual income of $19,000 — $4,000 less than Clark earned as a rookie in 1977.
Incomplete data on baseball-reference.com indicates Clark earned nearly $16 million during his career.
This is his second bankruptcy according to the Business Journal. In 1992, he claimed to be underwater, burdened by a stable of luxury cars and an unprofitable drag racing company.
A 2009 New York Daily News story reported Clark was “victimized by an unscrupulous lawyer and financial advisor who bilked him out of most of the money he’d been awarded in (a) collusion settlement.”
“I’m OK now,” Clark told the Daily News, “but I lost a ton of money because of those crooks.”
The same Daily News story also reported that Clark was in a serious accident in 2003 while riding a motorcycle on a Los Angeles freeway. Clipped by car, Clark wiped out, suffering six fractured ribs, a concussion, bleeding on the brain and vertigo.
Let’s be honest here. If you’re a Giants fan of a certain age, you’re conflicted. He was the Giants’ brightest light for his first 10 major league seasons, even as he leveled verbal broadsides against team management (“This organization is a loser,” was typical of the genre), and even as he engaged in the feud with manager Frank Robinson that was a factor in the trade that sent him to St. Louis.
Where he spent the three seasons for which he is known best.
That’s a meager return on the emotion you invested in him during his time in San Francisco. Sure, you admired him for the thunderous home run he hit to vanquish the Dodgers in the 1985 NLCS. Clark’s sniping at Tony Gwynn, Mr. Padre, during his two years in San Diego? Not so much.
Clark’s retirement has been a rocky road. He managed a couple of independent league teams — the Springfield Sliders and the River City Rascals. He’s worked on TV and radio. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a few years ago Clark stepped in mud up to his knee, claiming that Albert Pujols had used PEDs. He backed down and apologized when Pujols sued. Now this.
In 1987, at what we now recognize as the apex of his career, on a speedy Cardinals team that broadcaster Joe Garagiola described as “seven rabbits and a jackhammer,” Clark was asked about the secret to his success.
“I guess I can hit a little,” he said. The trouble started when life hit back.
