Rant #2,466: Old Days

A piece of my childhood bid adieu to the world on Wednesday, and when I heard he had passed, I flashed back to a younger time in my life, when the only thing that mattered was baseball.

I was a young kid growing up in Queens, not very far away from Shea Stadium, the home of the New York Mets, but I was a New York Yankees fan, and I lived and died with them.

And in those years, those formative years of my life, I mainly died with the Yankees, because after decades of being the best team on the planet, by 1965--the year I attended my first Yankees game at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx--the team was old, it was inept, and it was quite frankly, a horror show.

I learned to love baseball in spite of all that, and even though the Yankees were bad, and not a very good team from 1965 until the mid 1970s, I just lived and breathed baseball.

I played in our neighborhood's youth league, I watched every game I could--Yankees, Mets, and even the Game of the Week with out of town teams--and I even played the "Challenge the Yankees" board game--where somehow, the Yankees always won--and Strat-O-Matic baseball.

Yes, those Yankees were bad, but to me, I loved to watch them.

Even the bad Yankees teams had stars, and when great players like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford finally retired, they made way for some other very interesting, talented ballplayers: Mel Stottlemyre, Bobby Murcer, Roy White, Fritz Peterson--he of the double switch marriage shenanigans, and incident that certainly welcomed me into adulthood--and that was about that.

Horace Clarke, who died on Wednesday at age 81, was not one of those interesting, very talented ballplayers, but he was a constant with the team, their second baseman for most of those somber years.

And he took the blame for a lot of their rotten play, because, well, he wasn't Bobby Richardson, but Jerry Kenney wasn't Clete Boyer, and Jake Gibbs wasn't Elston Howard.

They simply did not have the horses back then, but poor Horace Clarke took the brunt of the abuse for their ineptitude.

Look, he had some talent. He made the major leagues, so he had to have some talent, and some pride, too, as one of the first players form the U.S. Virgin Islands to make the major leagues.

But he was never a good hitter, he was an adequate but far from spectacular defender, and, well, he was simply Horace Clarke.

The Yankees have always had great second basemen playing for them. Just some of those names include Willie Randolph, Robinson Cano, Gleyber Torres and now, DJ LeMahieu.

The switch-hitting Clarke was not one of those great players, but he held his own better than he was ever given credit for.

He twice led the league in double plays turned, led the league in singles, and his first two career homers were grand slams. He also broke up no-hitters three times in the ninth inning.

But he was Horace Clarke, so few took notice of his accomplishments. He seemed to do everything pretty well, but totally unspectacularly, which sealed his fate with Yankees fans.

He played his entire career with the Yankees, save a short stint with the San Diego Padres. He was a .256 lifetime hitter, never hit more than six homers during a season, and he was the best the Yankees had to offer at second base during those lean years.

In a funny way, those teams were as much Horace Clarke's Yankees as they were Bobby Murcer's Yankees or Roy White's Yankees.

But those players did have incredible talent, and their careers stretched to when the Yankees teams they played on were excellent teams. Murcer and White led the way for the Yankees teams of the mid-1970s, the teams of Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson and Catfish Hunter.

Horace Clarke was, well, Horace Clarke.

He was essentially replaced by Willie Randolph at the position, and the rest is history.

Clarke stayed active in baseball after his retirement, working as a baseball instructor for the Virgin Islands Department of Recreation, and he also served as a part-time scout for the Kansas City Royals.

He would occasionally return to Yankee Stadium for Oldtimer's Day celebrations, but otherwise, he remained little more than a footnote in Yankees history, the guy who bridged the gap at second base between Richardson and Randolph, two really great players.

Horace Clarke was who he was, those Yankees teams were what they were, but they were MY teams, and when I heard during last night's broadcast that he had passed, so many memories went through my head.

And living up to Clarke's legacy, the red-hot Yankees actually lost last night.

Blame it on Horace Clarke, I guess.

Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.