a series to remember

If you set out to document the greatest performances in League Championship Series history, you’d have a lot of ground to cover. After all, this is the 40th anniversary of the first expansion of baseball’s postseason. Yet any Mississippian who’s followed the game for a while — say, 20 years plus — could give you one for the list right off the top of his head. Will Clark, 1989. The former Mississippi State star put on a superstar show in the San Francisco Giants’ 4 games to 1 win over the Chicago Cubs. It was the postseason debut for Clark, who had a thing for debuts. He homered in his first pro at-bat and in his first big league at-bat, off Nolan Ryan, no less. In that 1989 NLCS, Clark went 13-for-20 (.650) with 2 home runs, 8 RBIs and 8 runs in the five games. He set the tone for the Giants’ dominance of the series in Game 1 when he went 4-for-4 with six RBIs. He was 3-for-3 with two homers, including a grand slam, against the Cubs young ace Greg Maddux. In the clinching Game 5, Clark delivered the tying and go-ahead runs with an eighth-inning single off Mitch Williams. In the World Series against Oakland — the infamous Earthquake Series — Clark had four hits but no RBIs as the Giants were swept. He never got back to the Fall Classic, but the sometimes irascible guy known as “The Thrill” gave us an LCS performance you can’t forget. And it’s a tale that will only get better as it ages.