Card Corner Plus: 1974 Topps: The Horace Clarke Era

He wasn't the best, but Horace Clarke had a reputation as a hard worker.

He wasn’t the best, but Horace Clarke had a reputation as a hard worker.

There’s a lot going on with Horace Clarke’s 1974 Topps card. First off, we can see that the cameraman has opted to photograph Clarke while he is waiting in the on-deck circle, rather than wait for him to take his at-bat. Wearing his trademark glasses, Clarke has a particularly eager expression on his face, as if he cannot wait to take his swings against a live pitcher. Second, we can see, at least partially, the 50th anniversary patch for Yankee Stadium, which the Yankees wore on their left sleeves during the 1973 season (you can see the full patch below). The summer of ’73 marked the final year for the stadium in its original state, prior to the massive reconstruction that shut the park down in 1974 and 1975, and set the stage for the unveiling of the “new” Yankee Stadium in 1976.

ClarkeThere is added significance to the 1974 Clarke card. It is the final card that Topps issued for Clarke. After playing out the 1974 season with the Yankees and then enduring a midseason sale to the lowly Padres, Clarke saw his career come to an unceremonious end. The Yankees’ decision to sell off Clarke unofficially ended an intriguing era in the franchise’s history.

For what seems like decades now, members of the mainstream media have labeled the Yankee years of 1965 to 1974 as the “Horace Clarke Era.” It’s a look back at a time when the Yankees struggled through bad baseball followed by a period of mediocrity, while missing out on postseason play for 11 full seasons. As the Yankees’ starting second baseman for almost all of that span, Clarke become the symbol of Yankee ineptitude during the era that followed the glory of the early 1960s and predated the rebirth of the Steinbrenner Era. Writers and fans generally viewed Clarke as an inadequate player, perfectly representative of a team that was never quite good enough to match the results of American League rivals like the Twins, Orioles, Red Sox and A’s.

Just as those Yankees were flawed, Clarke was, too. He was too aggressive at the plate, too determined to swing at pitches that were borderline strikes; as a result, he did not draw as many walks as the Yankees would have liked, which reduced the impact of his ability to steal bases.

As a defensive player, Clarke lacked the range of the era’s best second basemen, like Bobby Knoop and Julian Javier. Clarke also struggled to turn the double play; he often bailed out early on takeout slides by aggressive baserunners. Rather than turn the pivot in the conventional manner, Clarke often jumped out of the way of runners while stubbornly holding onto the ball and giving himself no chance to complete the double play. At times, Yankee pitchers confronted Clarke about his decision to hold onto the ball, but the scoldings never seemed to have much of an impact.

Clarke had an unlikely baseball beginning. Born in St. Croix, he grew up playing ball in the Virgin Islands (which had produced only four major leaguers up until that time), where he was scouted by the Yankees and Pirates. Ultimately, he signed with the Yankees in 1958. Assigned to Kearney of the Nebraska State League, Clarke hit .225 and looked like an immediate bust. It didn’t help that he was all of five feet nine inches tall, which led to the inevitable claim that he was too small to play professional ball. As it turned out, all he needed was time to adjust, particularly to having to play games at night, which was something he rarely did in the Virgin Islands.

The following summer, Clarke hit .292 playing for St. Petersburg in the Florida State League. He then moved slowly but steadily up the Yankees’ chain, hitting .307 for Fargo-Moorhead in 1960 and then a solid .278 for Binghamton of the Single-A Eastern League in 1961.

Perhaps Clarke’s biggest minor league breakthrough came in 1962, when the Yankees bumped him up to Double-A Amarillo of the Texas League. Clarke felt his play was helped by his decision to play winter ball in Puerto Rico, something he did each offseason. Not only did Clarke bat an even .300, but he showed previously unforeseen power by hitting nine home runs. That kind of performance convinced the Yankees that they had a prospect on their hands. The following summer, Clarke moved up to Triple-A Richmond. He struggled in his first go-round, hitting a meager .249, but showed significant improvement the following year, as he hit .299 with 51 walks. Clarke was now that close to the major leagues.

The Yankees might have been tempted to bring Clarke up to start the 1965 season, but they still had incumbent second baseman Bobby Richardson, a reliable defender who was only 29. So Clarke headed back to Triple-A, this time to Toledo, the Yankees’ new affiliate in the International League. Clarke played well for the Mud Hens, well enough to be recalled to New York in mid-May. The Yankees decided they could use the speedy Clarke in a utility role, backing up Clete Boyer at third, spelling Richardson at second, and even filling in for Tony Kubek at shortstop. Clarke stayed with the Yankees for the rest of May and June, then went back to Toledo to finish the minor league season, before being recalled to the Bronx in September. In total, Clarke appeared in 51 games for the Yankees, and though he didn’t set the Bronx on fire, he hit a respectable .259 while impressing with his athleticism.

By now, Clarke’s minor league days were behind him. Although Richardson had committed to playing one final season for the Yankees, the Yankees found room for Clarke, first as utility infielder and then as a replacement at shortstop, as Kubek had retired and Ruben Amaro had been sidelined by a major injury. Manager Ralph Houk informed Clarke that he would finish the season at shortstop, and then move to second base the following spring, as a replacement for the retiring Richardson. Not surprisingly, Clarke struggled to handle the defensive chores of the position, particularly with regard to making the long throw from the left side of the diamond. On the plus side, he did hit a respectable .266 and reached base 32 percent of the time, decent numbers for a middle infielder of that era.

As expected, Houk made Clarke his everyday second baseman and leadoff man in 1967, and watched him hit .272, which he paired with 42 walks and 21 stolen bases. As a team, the Yankees sunk to levels that hadn’t been seen in decades, losing 90 games, which made Clarke and others the targets of criticism. Ideally, Clarke would have batted down in the order, but on a weak offensive team where only Mickey Mantle forged a good on-base percentage, Clarke seemed as logical a choice as anyone.

Unfortunately, Clarke regressed badly in 1968, a year that saw most hitters struggle under the difficult batting conditions of the day. A spring training wrist injury, which lingered into the season, didn’t help matters. Clarke’s batting average plummeted 42 points, all the way down to .230, while his walk total halved, from 42 down to 23. With an on-base percentage of .258, the worst of any Yankees starter, Clarke was hardly the ideal leadoff man for the fifth-place Yankees. He also exhibited an incredible lack of power, as he amassed only nine extra-base hits for the entire season.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

Clarke enjoyed a resurgence in 1969, bolstered in part by the lowering of the pitcher’s mound and changes to the strike zone. He batted .285, walked 53 times, and stole 33 bases. Clarke tried to explain the reasons behind his revitalized hitting. “I am walking more because I feel comfortable at the plate,” he told Jim Ogle of The Sporting News. “Last year, not feeling right, made me over-anxious and kept me from thinking [about what I need to do]. Now I am relaxed and comfortable and can wait for my pitch, and let the bad ones go by.”

Not only did Clarke show a more selective eye; his batting average and stolen base totals were numbers for which Richardson would have killed, but Yankees fans did not seem to give Clarke his full level of credit on a team that finished 80-81. He also showed a remarkable level of durability, as he appeared in 156 out of 162 games, and led the AL in at-bats, something he would also do in 1970.

At 29 years of age, Clarke had peaked—and would never come close to matching his hitting numbers of 1969. But he gained some additional notoriety in 1970, when he piled up five hits in an April game and subsequently broke up three different no-hit bids—one by Jim Rooker, a second by Sonny Siebert and a third by Joe Niekro—all in the ninth inning. In breaking up those bids at immortality, all within the span of a month, Clarke cemented a reputation as one of the game’s peskiest hitters.

Clarke then experienced one of the most surreal moments of his career on the final day of the 1971 season. Playing in the final game in the history of Washington’s RFK Stadium (well, until the Washington Nationals showed up, anyway) Clarke stepped to the plate with two outs in the top of the ninth inning and the Yankees trailing. 7-5. With the Yankees on the verge of losing, angry Washington Senators fans stormed the field, furious that owner Bob Short had announced the move of the franchise to Arlington, Texas. Clarke never did get to take his at-bat. The umpires called the game, announcing a forfeit and awarding a 9-0 victory to the Yankees.

From 1970 to 1973, Clarke maintained his strong durability, as he played in at least 147 games in each of these four seasons, and he also drew a few more walks, including a high of 64 in 1971. But his overall batting skills tailed off.  He didn’t bat any higher than .263 during that four-year stretch. His base stealing speed also diminished, falling off gradually through the 1973 season, when he was caught stealing in 10 of 21 attempts.

By 1972, Clarke had become a wanted man in the Bronx. As Phil Pepe of the New York Daily News once wrote: “There are people, thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, who believe that Horace Clare should be tarred and feathered and run out of town.” Pepe would go on to defend Clarke, but his point about Clarke’s lack of popularity was on the money.

As a team, the Yankees had fared respectably in the early ’70s. In 1970, they won 93 games, but no one seemed to notice in a year the powerhouse Orioles dominated the competition on their way to a World Series triumph over the Reds. The Yankees then played .500 ball over the next three seasons. It was nothing special, but it wasn’t the level of terrible play that some media observers had led fans to believe. It just wasn’t what the Yankees, after decades of success, had come to expect.

In spring training of 1974, Clarke finally lost his starting job to Gene Michael, a far inferior hitter who was better known as a shortstop. Now 33, Clarke appeared as a pinch-runner and made only the occasional start at second base. Through his first 24 game appearances, he came to bat only 47 times, and compiled a meager .234 average in the process. When he did play, he frequently heard the boo-birds at Yankee Stadium. Given that he could play only one position reasonably well, Clarke wasn’t the best fit in a utility role.

The Yankees’ acquisition of another infielder, Fernando Gonzalez, sunk Clarke deeper on the depth chart. But to his credit, Clarke welcomed Gonzalez, and offered him advice on how to play second base and adjust to life in the major leagues. In an era when many veterans shunned the young players who had been summoned to take their jobs, Clarke was an exception.

On May 31, 1974, Clarke’s career-long association with the Yankees’ organization came to an end. The Yankees sold him to the Padres, who already had veteran Glenn Beckert and a young Derrel Thomas capable of playing second base. Clarke didn’t gain much traction in San Diego. Other than an occasional start, he appeared mostly as a pinch-hitter, and he struggled to adapt to that role. By season’s end, his batting average had fallen to .189 with San Diego, and .204 for the season as a whole — both of which were easily career lows.

On Oct. 3, just a few days after the end of the regular season, the Padres cut Clarke loose. Not surprisingly, no one showed much interest. With little publicity or fanfare, the mild-mannered second baseman from the Virgin Islands called it quits.

As a young fan in the early 1970s, I found Clarke an intriguing player to follow. He had a cool nickname, “Hoss,” which brought to mind the name of Dan Blocker’s iconic character from the long-running television show, Bonanza. Yankees broadcaster Bill White seemed to love that nickname, as evidenced by the way that he drew out the name “Hossss Clarke,” saying it with an unusual level of relish and gusto.

Clarke was also a unique-looking ballplayer. He wore extremely large glasses, very round and very discernible, even on an old black-and-white, small television screen. In addition, Clarke wore a helmet while playing second base, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear. It may have had something to do with his fear of being upended on double-play takeout slides. It might have also stemmed from a 1969 incident in which Clarke was hit in the head with a ball. Whatever the reason, Clarke made for an interesting look in the middle of the diamond.

By the late 1980s, after the glory years of the “Bronx Zoo” had come to pass, the New York media began referring to the Yankees of the late ’60s and early ’70s as the Horace Clarke Years. The recollections were hardly nostalgic; they were clearly derisive, remembering a time when the Yankees failed to contend, almost indirectly scapegoating Clarke as the primary reasons.

Such critiques provide a distorted view of the situation. While Clarke was no All-Star, he was a capable switch-hitter who stole bases, bunted well, made good contact, was the rare player who walked more often than he struck out, and hit for decent batting averages, at least in the dead ball years of the 1960s. Yankees coach Dick Howser once described Clarke as “the best instinctive runner on the club,” adding that Horace “day after day, does a helluva job. Nobody works harder on this club.”

Given Clarke’s skills, he would have been more than acceptable as the eighth- or ninth-place hitter in the Yankees’ lineup. By 1968, the Yankees should have turned to someone like Roy White, a patient and disciplined hitter, as their leadoff man, but Houk made the mistake of using Clarke in that role. Why? For most of his managerial career, Houk did not understand that his leadoff man should have a high on-base percentage. He had previously used Richardson in the role, despite the fact that Richardson didn’t walk much. Clarke might have looked like a leadoff man and run like a leadoff man, but other than 1969, his skills were never suited for the role. That was Houk’s mistake, not Clarke’s.

As a defensive player, Clarke also had his shortcomings. He was never as smooth as Richardson, never comfortable turning double plays. Yet, he was hardly a butcher. For his career, Clarke accumulated a Total Zone rating of 32 at second base, far superior to Richardson’s 12. He managed to lead the AL in assists six times, and in putouts on four occasions. Part of that might have been attributable to having a sinkerballer like Mel Stottlemyre on the staff, but it’s also an indication that Clarke had decent range. His ability to go to his left became especially handy when Mantle played first base. Playing on bad knees, Mantle had no range at all, but Clarke did a good job in sealing what could have been a major hole between second and first base.

Was Clarke an All-Star player? Of course not. But he wasn’t a replacement-level player either, despite frequent criticisms coming from New York sportswriters like Dick Young, one of Clarke’s staunchest critics. (One New York sportswriter used to refer to Clarke as “Horrible Horace,” a particularly unfair and cruel nickname.) Clarke was also something more than the mediocrity that he’s been made out to be. Most mediocre players do not maintain starting jobs as long as Clarke did. As Houk himself once said of Clarke, “I know I got a lot of criticism for playing Horace Clarke as much as I did, but he was a lot better ballplayer than anyone gave him credit for.”

The Yankees could have won a division title with a second baseman like Clarke, if only they had been better at other positions, like third base or right field. If we want to discover the real reasons why the Yankees struggled during the relatively lean years that fell in the late ’60s and early ’70s, we should look directly at the revolving doors at those positions. The Yankees had substantially weaker players at third base, where Charley Smith, Bobby Cox, Jerry Kenney, Rich McKinney and Celerino Sanchez all proved lacking, particularly with bats in their hands. Right field was hardly any better, as the Yankees passed the torch from one journeyman to another: Steve Whitaker to Andy Kosco to Curt “Clank” Blefary to Ron Swoboda. Unlike Clarke, none of these right fielders or third basemen lasted long enough to become targets of the critics, or symbols of a forgettable era.

We need to remember a few things about Horace Clarke. Let’s remember that Horace was a likable guy who rarely complained and hardly ever made trouble for his managers and coaches. He was the guy who laid out the welcome mat for one of his replacements, something that no one expected him to do. And unlike most of his teammates, Horace lived in the Bronx (all of three blocks from Yankee Stadium), making himself a part of the community.

Clarke was also a respectable ballplayer, someone who played hard and contributed at times with his bat, his glove, and his foot speed. While lesser players came and went, Clarke held his ground. So let’s stop knocking the man who was once booed during pre-game introductions on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium.

We should remember that good ol’ Horace Clarke was not so bad after all.

References & Resources

  • The Sporting News
  • New York Daily News
  • Horace Clarke’s player file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library


Bruce Markusen has authored seven baseball books, including biographies of Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda and Ted Williams, and A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s, which was awarded SABR's Seymour Medal.
7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Robert
9 years ago

Really fantastic piece. This brings me back a ways to the days that I first became a Yankee fan. That they were so atrocious then is what made the championships of ’77 and ’78 so much sweeter.

Greg Davis
9 years ago
Reply to  Robert

He was my favorite player. Not nearly as good as his teammates Bobby Murcer and Roy White but an average second baseman for the time.

Jeff
9 years ago

The article omits a small quirk in Clarke’s career: His first two major league Homeruns were BOTH grandslams.

Joe Pilla
9 years ago

Fine piece, Bruce, and thank you!
In comedy and major league baseball (As a longtime Mets fan, I’ve sometimes had trouble telling the difference.), timing is everything.
We’ve just witnessed an extended farewell to Derek Jeter, a player whose career almost precisely matched one of the most successful runs in Yankees –and thus, major league–history. (His getting out when it looks like the Bombers, after two failures to reach the postseason, are in recession, is most timely.) How much of his team’s extended success is directly due to Jeter I leave to the numbers guardians. The face of the franchise for two decades has been Jeter’s, and what will you bet that in 2030 this period will be known as The Derek Jeter Era?
Horace Clarke was a solid major leaguer who misfortune was to join the Yanks when the wheels fell off their juggernaut and who retired just before they would be restored to the dominance we all either loved or hated them for. Sportswriters and fans love a narrative, and ofttimes mistake coincidence for causation. Clarke appears, plays and leads off most days for years, and then is discarded during a period when rooting for the Yankees really was like rooting for a debilitated U.S. Steel. Even I think of it as “The Horace Clarke Era,” and I always felt sorry for the derision the man received. If he had been alive in 1912, and fancied an ocean cruise, 5 would get you 10 that he would have booked passage on the Titanic…
I, too, really like this card, Bruce. It has a quiet charm. As a bespectacled kid, I had a soft spot for the few players who wore glasses, even poor, unappreciated Horace Clarke.

Dennis Bedard
9 years ago

That it is called the Horace Clarke Era has a certain poetic justice. One of the reasons the Yankees fell apart from 65-75 was their reluctance to sign black players in the late 50’s and early 60’s. Most of those players ended up in the National League. If you read David Halberstam’s books about the 1949 and 1964 seasons, he writes about this fact at length. I cannot think of one black superstar who played for the Yankees until Reggie Jackson came along in 1977.

Christopher O'Hare
9 years ago
Reply to  Dennis Bedard

ahh the Yankees had a guy called Elston Howard. He was a superstar by any definition of the word.

Trace
8 years ago

I had the privilege to sit with Mr. Clarke on a plane ride last night. What an exceptional person. However anyone may feel about his baseball skills, Mr. Clarke excels in humanity. Most sports fans only want excellence in on field actions. We neglect the aspect that truly matters and that is the true person. I would take a team of Horace Clarke’s any day over a team of selfish, self serving, doped up A-Rod’s. Unfortunately, winning and money mean more to fans than having their team represented by good people. Mr. Clarke, thanks for a wonderful conversation and for your wisdom.