USC’s Wes Clarke took the national spotlight this spring. Will the show continue?
David Clarke remembers the rush of adrenaline as fans swarmed the Liberty baseball team bus.
It never failed. Anytime Clarke and his Liberty teammates went on their baseball road trips in the late 1980’s, a crowd would be there to greet them, peering in the bus, impatiently waiting, autograph materials ready.
“We’d pull up somewhere and we’re like, ‘Wow, fans are here to greet us. That’s crazy,’” Clarke told The State, laughing. “Well, we found out real quick, they weren’t looking to talk to us at all. They were looking to talk to Bobby Richardson.”
In those days, Richardson was in the twilight of his career as a college baseball coach. The Sumter native coached the South Carolina baseball team from 1970-76, after a legendary playing career with the New York Yankees. After a brief stint at Coastal Carolina, he led Liberty from 1987-1990. Even then, his fame dwarfed Clarke and his Liberty teammates.
Clarke was a solid player, a left-handed hitter with some pop. But he wasn’t a star like Richardson — or like his son Wes Clarke is now.
All these years later, David Clarke now finds joy in watching his son draw the crowds and adulation, watching him thrive for a Gamecocks program that Richardson once helped elevate to prominence. For a stretch early this season, there was no bigger star in the college game than Wes Clarke.
As No. 2-seed South Carolina opens NCAA regional play today against No. 3-seed Virginia, Clarke stands tied for the national lead with 22 home runs. He became just the ninth player in Gamecocks history to eclipse the 20-homer mark for a season. As Gamecocks fans file into Founders Park this weekend, Clarke will very likely be at the center of attention.
His at-bats this season have provided moments of spectacle. In the team’s first seven games of the season, Clarke homered a whopping eight times — matching his SEC-leading total from last year’s pandemic-shortened season. Then, after a short dry spell, he homered seven times in 12 games between March and April. All the while, David and wife Mary couldn’t help but see the headlines, social media posts and national player of the week awards and beam with pride.
What impressed David the most about his son was the way he handled that sudden rush of fame.
“I didn’t see a change in him at all,” Clarke said. “He was obviously happy it was happening, and we talked about it. I said, ‘Enjoy it while it’s happening because you know baseball. You can be on top one week, and you can be on the bottom the next week.’”
Those words proved prudent as Clarke and the Gamecocks cooled off from their torrid start. In 16 April games, Clarke homered just once, watching his batting average dip well below .300. In a sweep at the hands of Ole Miss, Clarke slid to seventh in the batting order.
Those kinds of slumps go hand-in-hand with the rhythmic nature of baseball, but part of it, too, was the way that pitchers started approaching Clarke. Knowing the 6-foot-2, 236-pound junior was a threat to homer at any moment, pitchers stopped challenging him in the zone with fastballs. They pitched around him more, using a heavy diet of breaking balls and pitches that just darted off the plate.
Part of Clarke’s maturation as a player was finding a way to adjust to his opponents’ adjustments.
“When people aren’t challenging you as much as you’d like, it takes a lot of discipline to be able to just go up there and take those pitches that look so good but they aren’t,” Wes Clarke said midseason. “A big adjustment for me was just to slow down, see the ball deeper and get my swings off when I have the opportunity, because it might be the only pitch I get the whole at-bat.”
Head coach Mark Kingston raved about the way Clarke handled that stretch. After playing just 19 games as a freshman and after COVID-19 cut last year short, Clarke has emerged as a team leader the Gamecocks this season, alongside the likes of outfielders Brady Allen and Andrew Eyster.
“He’s a mature kid,” Kingston said. “He doesn’t take himself too serious. He loves the aspects of the game that are not just hitting. He loves being a teammate. He loves goofing around with the guys, and he just loves studying the game.”
Clarke takes after his father, David, with his more reserved, quieter personality. But he’s not afraid to have fun, either. Along with Allen, he’s one of the masterminds behind the team’s home run scythe, a dugout prop that should be at Founders Park this weekend. Clarke’s nickname is “2 Glocks,” which is maybe slightly less over the top than Allen’s “Soul Reaper” name.
Clarke brims with confidence, too. Not in a cocky way. But it’s clear he has high expectations for himself and his teammates. When he reached the 20 home run plateau late in the season, he said 20 was his goal and that he was ready to hit more. When the Gamecocks lost to Alabama in the first game of the SEC tournament, he said: “At the end of the day when the season comes to the end, and our team’s in Omaha, this loss isn’t gonna matter one bit.”
Now, the Gamecocks will have to try to prove it, and it won’t be easy going against two red-hot teams in Old Dominion and Virginia. For the Gamecocks to make a deep postseason run, Clarke will likely need to be in the thick of it. And he has seemingly snapped back into his early season form, homering seven times in May. He comes into the weekend batting .275 with a team-leading .433 on-base percentage and .667 slugging percentage.
Clarke’s parents will be among the thousands in attendance at Founders Park this weekend, which started allowing full-capacity crowds in the final weekend of the season. Both David and Mary have attended every weekend home game and all but one weekend away game. They’ve seen every home run ball and every scythe-wielding celebration.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” David Clarke said. “He was a home run hitter in travel ball and high school and here, but this — I wouldn’t say it’s surprising — but it’s been very fun to watch.
“And we hope he has a few more in him.”
