Andrew Gutman
Staff Writer
Springfield, Mass. native and baseball player Doug Clark visited the Springfield College campus to speak on Wednesday about his baseball journey.
Yesterday in the Richard B. Flynn Campus Union, Springfield College had the privilege of hosting professional baseball player and Springfield, Mass. native Doug Clark.
Clark was born and raised in Springfield, where he grew up playing all different sports. After playing football, basketball and tennis at Central High School, he walked on to the baseball team at the University of Massachusetts, where he originally was given a football scholarship.
Clark has had an interesting run. Getting called to the major leagues in 2005 after an injury opened up a spot on the San Francisco Giants’ roster, Clark has since fluctuated to different baseball teams all over the world, including Korea, and now Mexico, where his team just won the Caribbean Series earlier this year.
Associate Professor of Communications Marty Dobrow knows Clark from years back where he profiled him for his book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door. Dobrow saw the opportunity to bring Clark to Springfield, and he jumped at the chance.
“Doug is just a tremendous inspiration. He is able to capture things in a really thoughtful and articulate fashion,” said Dobrow.
With a career that has had its ups and its downs, Clark has stayed true to who he is. Through it all he never forgets his roots. Coming back home and participating in events like this gives him a great sense of privilege.
“It gives me some time to relate to students and to explain to them what exactly I went through [with] my journey and through my adventure,” said Clark.
Despite the event being on short notice, there was a good turn out from many students, as well as friends and family of Doug Clark. It was a fun hour as Clark sat at a table covered in his five jerseys and different awards, including the MVP award given to him at the end of the Caribbean Series finals.
Clark is now playing for the Mexican team, Los Tigres de Quintana Roo.
“Right now [the plan] is to get on that plane on Saturday morning and to start the pre-season right before the season starts,” stated Clark. “I want to really go into the season with my same strategy of working hard, and hopefully I’ll keep going. I don’t like to look too far into the future.”