SF Giants #22 - Clark

When I was very young and started following the Giants one of my favorite players was a star with the team and wore #22.  I used to hide under my covers with a transistor radio and listen to Hank Greenwald call the games on KNBR.  I remember a memorable moment (cannot recall if it was Hank or someone else calling it) where the score was tied 2-2 with 2 on and 2 out with a 2-2 count on #22. I thought that was perhaps the coolest thing ever with all the twos.

In addition to Willie McCovey, who was in his last couple years, Jack Clark was my favorite Giant.  He was the closest the team had to a star, he hit for power and was a fan favorite.  He made a couple All Star teams and had a few years where he got some MVP votes.  When he moved on to the Cardinals, I was disappointed but not crushed I am not sure exactly why.  He was traded for 4 players including David Green, who we thought was a future star at 1B, Dave LaPoint, a solid starting pitcher which was a big need, Gary Rajsich, who only play a part of the season with the Giants before being sold back to the Cards and eventually to the Japanese league and Jose Uribe. Jose is an interesting story, when we got him his name was Jose Gonzalez but it ended up he had lied about his name and age and shortly after joining the Giants he switched to Uribe, his real name. The joke was we literally got the player to be named later.

Jack Clark played 10 of his 18 seasons but seems better remembered for his 3 years with the Cardinals, probably because he was in the post season two of those years.  He also played 1 year for the Yankees and 2 each for the Padres and Red Sox before retiring.  This card that I received as a 3rd place prize at the LCS for their $10 packs denotes him as a Yankee:

It isn't the prettiest card and I tend to find these types of cut autos from people that are alive less than spectacular but at one point he was my favorite player so I decided to pick up this auto out of the available options.  It is numbered only 02/10 and is a nice big auto.

I know there are a lot of fans (particularly Night Owl) of the "other" Clark who wore #22 and I don't want to disappoint:

This is a nice Fabric of the Game relic of Will Clark featuring a trophy shaped piece of jersey in recognition of his 1989 NLCS MVP award.  It is numbered 13/50 and shows Will in all his eye blacked glory rounding the bases after crushing a HR with his beautiful lefty swing.  I always wondered if he picked the number 22 on purpose as a tribute to Jack or if the Giants were too cheap to sew Clark on a different jersey.  At that time in their history, either was probably possible.