Just two days after Ozzie Smith inspired St. Louis to “go crazy” with a game-winning home run in Game 5 of the NLCS, Jack Clark finished off the Dodgers with a ninth-inning blast that sent the Cardinals to the 1985 World Series.
With two outs in the ninth and the Cardinals trailing by a run, Clark hit a three-run homer off Tom Niedenfuer on October 16, 1985, to give St. Louis a 7-5 win and a six-game series victory over the Dodgers.
In a game that featured two of the National League’s top pitchers that season in the Cardinals’ Joaquin Andujar (21-12, 3.40 ERA during the regular season) and the Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser (19-3, 2.03), the game came down to bullpens and managerial strategies.
Until Clark’s home run, the Dodgers had led the entire game. Mariano Duncan led off bottom of the first with a double, then scored on an RBI single by Bill Madlock. Duncan made it 2-0 with an RBI single in the second before Tom Herr answered with a run-scoring single of his own.
The Dodgers took a 4-1 lead in the fifth as Pedro Guerrero drove a run in with a sacrifice fly and Madlock followed with his third home run in three games.
In the seventh, the Cardinals evened the score as Willie McGee hit a two-run single that chased Hershiser from the game and Ozzie Smith followed with a triple off Niedenfuer to score McGee.
The following inning, the Dodgers appeared poised to reclaim the lead. Duncan led off with a triple, and after Cardinals reliever Todd Worrell got Ken Landreaux to pop out, Guerrero returned to the plate for the Dodgers. Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog opted to intentionally walk the big man even though that brought Madlock to the plate with runners on first and third.
The move paid off. Madlock hit into a 6-4-3 inning-ending double play.
“Well, the choice was to take two shots with a man on third to get two outs or shoot craps and hope to get a ground ball,” Herzog said. “Worrell made a good pitch and we were out of the inning.”[1]
“An amazing move,” Dodgers right fielder Mike Marshall said. “I thought Whitey would walk both guys (Guerrero and Madlock) to load the bases, but it worked this time.”[2]
Though Herzog’s machinations allowed the Cardinals to escape the seventh inning, Marshall led off the eighth with a solo home run that gave the Dodgers a 5-4 lead heading into the top of the ninth.
Niedenfuer opened the inning by striking out pinch-hitter Cesar Cedeno. McGee singled and Smith drew a walk, but when Tom Herr grounded out to Niedenfuer, the Cardinals had just one out remaining with Clark coming to the plate. Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda suddenly had a decision to make: with first base open, should he walk Clark and pitch to Andy Van Slyke?
On the one hand, Clark, whom the Cardinals acquired in a February trade with the Giants, had hit just one home run since he suffered a rib injury on August 23. In Clark’s last at-bat in the seventh inning, Niedenfuer had struck him out on three sliders.
On the other, Clark was the Cardinals’ primary source of home run power, having hit 22 homers and driven in 87 runs during the regular season, and he was hitting .350 for the playoffs. Van Slyke, meanwhile, was just 1-for-10 for the series and hitting .067 in the playoffs.
Lasorda chose to pitch to Clark.
“If I was Tommy Lasorda, I’d pitch to me rather than Jack Clark,” Van Slyke said. “When they started to pitch to him, I’m sure Jack’s eyes got three inches wide. He must have lit up inside.”[3]
After striking out Clark with sliders two innings prior, Niedenfuer figured that Clark would be looking for that pitch again.[4] Instead, he opened the at-bat with his best pitch, a fastball.
He was right – Clark wasn’t looking for that pitch. He hit it anyway.
“Maybe I wasn’t expecting them to walk me intentionally,” Clark said, “but I thought they might at least try to work around me. Maybe some pitches away, but not a fastball in on me.”[5]
“Tommy may have been a little too pumped up, but he’s got a lot of heart and he was going after Clark with everything he had,” Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia said. “You’ve got to give Clark credit.”[6]
The ball sailed about 20 rows into the left-field stands. Before it even landed, Clark turned to look at his teammates in the dugout.
“I knew it was gone,” he said. “It didn’t matter where it landed. I just wanted to see my teammates’ reactions, because it was for all of them, for Whitey, for my mom and father, for my wife and two children, and last of all for me.”[7]
Clark wasn’t the only one to know it was a home run well before it landed.
“That would have had to hit the blimp and come back down to stay in the ballpark,” said Niedenfuer, who also had allowed Smith’s game-winning homer in Game 5. “He must have hit it 500 feet.”[8]
“As soon as I heard the ball hit the bat, my ears were ringing,” said Van Slyke. “The ball looked like a laser beam.”[9]
“There’s a particular sound that his home runs make – a bat-meeting-ball sound that can’t be described, but one which tells you this is a Jack Clark home run,” added Tito Landrum. “Today, if you were listening, you heard that sound.”[10]
“You can look at it on the replay,” Terry Pendleton said. “You’ll see him looking at us. Everybody knows it when Jack Clark hits a home run. He gave us the signal – ‘We got it.’”[11]
After Van Slyke flied out to end the inning, the Cardinals put the game in the hands of reliever Ken Dayley. Dayley retired the side in order, striking out Duncan and Enos Cabell before Guerrero flied out to McGee in center field.
“Oh man,” McGee said. “I didn’t think it would ever come down.”[12]
With the win in hand, the Cardinals celebrated in the Dodger Stadium visitor’s clubhouse. As the National League champions poured champagne over one another, the second-guessing regarding Lasorda’s decision to pitch to Clark was in full swing.
“My theory has always been if you have one guy making $1.3 million and another guy making $100,000, I pitch to the guy making $100,000,” Herzog said.[13]
He then admitted that if the Dodgers had walked Clark, he already planned to pinch-hit for Van Slyke.
“It’s easy to second-guess and I don’t mean to, because Tommy is an outstanding manager with good strategies, and I’m sure he’s got good statistics on Clark against Niedenfuer,” Herzog said, “but I was expecting him to bring in Jerry Reuss, walk Clark, and leave the decision up to me what to do. I would have used Brian Harper.”[14]
“I couldn’t figure it out,” Herr said. “Jack Clark’s the kind of guy that can hurt you, and the next guy hasn’t been having a good series. I felt great when I saw they were pitching to Jack.”[15]
The Dodgers’ Cabell said, “I was hoping they would pitch around him. Jack’s a home-run hitter and he can hit ‘em out of Yellowstone.”[16]
Both catchers were more forgiving of Lasorda’s decision.
“I don’t think it was the wrong choice at all,” Scioscia said. “I don’t think the pitch selection was bad either. I think Tom just tried to overthrow it. He was too pumped up and the ball went down the middle instead of outside, where we wanted it to go.”[17]
“I’m just glad I’m not a manager,” said Darrell Porter.[18]
In Los Angeles, the media reaction was clear – Lasorda had made a mistake.
“He should not have pitched to him,” wrote Mike Downey in the Los Angeles Times. “That’s all there is to it. He should have walked Jack Clark, or hit Jack Clark in the ribs with a change-up, or offered Jack Clark several billion dollars to leave the bat on his shoulder. Anything but pitch to him.[19]
“The easiest thing in the world is to second-guess,” Lasorda said. “But I’m the manager. I have to accept responsibility for my actions. The guy makes an out, I look good. But the guy hits a home run, and even my wife knows I should have walked him.”[20]
In St. Louis, Clark’s home run instantly joined Smith’s in Cardinals lore.
“They will be talking about this game for a long, long time,” wrote Kevin Horrigan in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “They will talk about it like they talk now about Enos Slaughter’s mad dash home in 1946. They’ll talk about it like they talk about Bob Gibson blowing down the Red Sox and the Tigers, like they talk about Lou Brock’s 118th steal and like they talk about the Man named Musial. It is now part of the Cardinal legacy, a shiny memory to be brought out and cherished for as long as the Birds sit on the bat. Where were you when Jack Clark hit his homer?[21]
Facing the Royals in the World Series, the Cardinals initially continued their momentum, winning three of the first four games before Kansas City won Games 5, 6, and 7 to win the title.
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[1] Gordon Edes, “Dodgers Pitch to Clark … It’s His Pitch,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[2] Gordon Edes, “Dodgers Pitch to Clark … It’s His Pitch,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[3] Mike Smith, “Dr. Clark Provides Cures,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.
[4] Ron Cobb, “Niedenfuer Is Foiled Again,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.
[5] Mike Smith, “Dr. Clark Provides Cures,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.
[6] Ron Cobb, “Niedenfuer Is Foiled Again,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.
[7] Mike McKenzie, “Lasorda brings out second-guessers by pitching to Clark,” Kansas City Times, October 17, 1985.
[8] Ron Cobb, “Niedenfuer Is Foiled Again,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.
[9] Gordon Edes, “Dodgers Pitch to Clark … It’s His Pitch,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[10] Mike Smith, “Dr. Clark Provides Cures,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.
[11] Richard Hoffer, “Cardinals Had No Doubts That Clark Had Connected for the Big Blow,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[12] Kevin Horrigan, “Cards Savor Feeling After Clark’s Blast,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.
[13] Mike McKenzie, “Lasorda brings out second-guessers by pitching to Clark,” Kansas City Times, October 17, 1985.
[14] Mike McKenzie, “Lasorda brings out second-guessers by pitching to Clark,” Kansas City Times, October 17, 1985.
[15] Mike Downey, “They Should Have Taken the Bat Out of Clark’s Hands,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[16] Mike Downey, “They Should Have Taken the Bat Out of Clark’s Hands,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[17] Gordon Edes, “Dodgers Pitch to Clark … It’s His Pitch,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[18] Mike Downey, “They Should Have Taken the Bat Out of Clark’s Hands,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[19] Mike Downey, “They Should Have Taken the Bat Out of Clark’s Hands,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[20] Gordon Edes, “Dodgers Pitch to Clark … It’s His Pitch,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1985.
[21] Kevin Horrigan, “Cards Savor Feeling After Clark’s Blast,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1985.