Will Clark, the Man Every S.F. Child Emulated While Playing Wiffle Ball, Returns to Giants (For Vague Community Relations Gig)

The San Francisco Giant who, a generation ago, shouted to a national TV audience how "fucking" incredible he was feeling has now been brought back by the team -- to work in community relations.

Sure, times do change and people do mellow with age. But you have to admit that's pretty fucking incredible.

For San Francisco baseball fans of a certain age, the mere mention of the name Will Clark is enough to induce a full-scale wallowing in nostalgia. The first thing you'd start with would be the stance.

Clark -- who busted on to the scene as a 22-year-old rookie in 1986 with a home run off Nolan Ryan in his first Major League swing -- stood ramrod straight, with his arms held high enough that he could (and did) wipe his nose on his short sleeves. He slowly and methodically twirled the bat high above his helmet and glared at the pitcher with an intensity usually reserved for men about to loot and burn a medieval village. And when he did swing, well, it was just perfect. Baseball, more than any other sport, can be broken down into a cavalcade of arcane statistics just as a byzantine grouping of ones and zeroes make up the electronic guts of the computer programs that allow you to read this article.

But there is no statistic for Will Clark's swing. Even at 11 years old, I knew I was watching a thing of beauty. Of course, at 11 years old, I thought it was pretty spiffy that he said "fucking" and "Goddamn right!" on TV, too.