Published June 13, 2015

He stood tall in the batter's box, from both sides of it. He had the strike zone of a telephone pole with legs. Most pitchers couldn't throw him a high fastball because they weren't tall enough to do so.

Today, Tony Clark stands tall yet again, as the Executive Director the Major League Baseball Players Association.

The 6'8" Clark, who turns 43 on Monday, was drafted in the first round 25 years ago this month by the Tigers in the 1990 Amateur Draft.


He was a rarity from those days: a Tigers draft pick who actually had a decent big league career.

Clark, drafted by the Tigers out of Valhalla High School in El Cajon, California, thrilled the Tigers with his switch-hitting power and adeptness at first base. So they snatched him off the board, second overall---right behind future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones.

It was with a wing and a prayer that the Tigers drafted Clark, despite his high school exploits, because in 1990, the Tigers were whiffing left and right on draft picks.

No real studs were being developed in the farm system in 1990. The last great draft classes of the mid-to-late 1970s---the ones that produced the core of the 1984 World Championship team---were a distant memory.

Instead of studs, the Tigers were drafting busts left and right.

And Clark made the Tigers nervous, because he was also a star basketball player, averaging over 43 points a game in his senior year. Then he went to the University of Arizona and San Diego State, playing more hoops.

It would have been just the Tigers' luck had Clark opted for the hardwood instead of the diamond.

But Tony Clark made his big league debut with the Tigers on September 3, 2005.

Over the next several seasons, Clark stood tall for the Tigers, swatting 124 home runs and amassing 391 RBI in his first four years in the bigs. He struck out a ton, but that was the trade off.

Despite the fast start to his career, Clark never quite reached stardom. The Tigers waived him after the 2001 season, turning him into a journeyman.

Things kind of fell apart gradually, though his home run stroke was a relative constant. He smacked 30 homers in just 349 at-bats for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2005, including four over two nights against Colorado.

Clark played for four teams after the Tigers cut him. He retired after the 2009 season.

When all was said and done on the diamond, Tony Clark had hit 251 home runs and put together a very respectable career OPS of .824. He was an All-Star in 2001 and finished third in Rookie of the Year voting in 1996.

It wasn't a Hall of Fame baseball career, but Clark nonetheless justified his decision to eschew basketball as a vocation.

Today, Clark is further proving that baseball was the right choice.

Clark is the sixth Executive Director in the history of the MLBPA but the first former big league player to hold the position. He became the top man in 2014, officially promoted from deputy director a year ago March following the untimely passing of his predecessor, Michael Weiner, who succumbed to cancer in November of 2013.

It's fair to say that Tony Clark has a chance to make far more waves as a former player than he ever did standing like a Redwood at the plate.

In an era of the growing pains of instant replay, the transition to a new commissioner, talk of an MLB-wide designated hitter, bigger player contracts than ever before and an influx of young, superstar talent dotting MLB's landscape, Clark's role as the MLBPA's chief gives him a lot to sink his teeth into.

Maybe not since the advent of free agency in the mid-1970s has baseball's future been more at the crossroads. 

This is a very interesting time to be the Executive Director of the MLBPA.

As a way of example, Clark was outspoken on the Kris Bryant scenario.

Bryant, the rookie wonder of the Chicago Cubs, was held off the Opening Day roster by the Cubs, ostensibly so the team could stunt his growth from a years of service perspective, thus placing Bryant under the Cubs' control for an extra year.

"We don't think it's in anyone's best interest," Clark said of the Bryant situation while visiting the Tigers during spring training last March, "and we don't think it's in the industry's best interest, to not have the best players on the field all the time."

When he toiled on the field for the Tigers, Clark was known as a cerebral player. He was well-read, well-spoken and the media often went to him for thoughtful introspection, as well as Clark's analysis of the team, which wasn't very good then.

That analysis is now league-wide and Clark offered more of it in March, in firm tones, when talking about Bryant and a system that is, in Clark's mind, flawed.

"As you might expect, I'm a former player," he said, "and to the extent I can appreciate (any player) having the opportunity to contribute, it's something that I pay attention to, something that we pay attention to, something that we will always pay attention to. It's our responsibility to pay attention to it."

Basketball's loss was baseball's gain.