'Four feet instead of two'--A polio survivor's baseball legacy

KISSIMMEE, Fla.—Out beyond left field, where members of the Houston Astros were playing catch during spring training, a man watched from a motorized scooter. At 62, Dave Clark’s tanned, weather-beaten skin testifies to hours in the sun, many of which were spent playing baseball, even though Clark had polio as a boy.

He contracted the crippling disease when he was only 10 months old. He hadn’t yet learned to walk. Clark spent the next year living in a rehabilitation center away from his family. At first, doctors didn’t expect him to live. Then they didn’t expect him to walk. When he got out, he had heavy leg braces and little crutches. He said he walked like the Frankenstein monster.

“I grew up [with] four feet instead of two,” Clark said. “Two crutches, two feet. I never knew how it was to run except the way I did it.”

His home life was mostly positive—his parents treated him like their other children. But school was different. Because of his disability, Clark’s schoolmates picked on him.

One day, the teacher announced a walking field trip to the fire station, about five blocks from school. The trip was two weeks off.

“I had two weeks of anxiety building up to this day because I dreaded the walk, knowing that I was going to slow down the entire class,” Clark said.

Finally, the day came. When the teacher said to line up, Clark went to the end of the line so he wouldn’t delay his class. But that day something different happened. Something other than the taunts and teasing he had dreaded for two weeks.

“Just before we start, a classmate of mine comes up to me and says, ‘Dave, I brought my little red wagon to school today. I want you to ride in it.’ And that just took all the anxiety off of me,” Clark said.

Starting in third grade, sports became a way for Clark to compete. It started with the rope climb, which he could do faster than the other kids because of his upper body strength.

“Sports became a way for me,” Clark said. “When I found out I could actually compete with so-called normal-bodied kids, able-bodied children, it helped change their perception of me.”

Clark figured out that pitching and playing first base gave him the best chance of success. He developed a knuckleball and a throwing motion that shifted his weight from one crutch to the other. He learned to bat and field on crutches.

“The best coaches would set up a mock infield. They would figure out what areas I could get to and cover, and then we’d have to adapt the infield to cover the weak spots for me. It worked out well,” Clark said.

It wasn’t easy, but Clark ended up pitching for 10 years in the minors and semi-professional leagues. In 1975, he was the top relief pitcher for the minor-league Indianapolis Clowns. Later, he became the owner of the team. He also played and coached in Sweden for 10 more years.

Today, he is a motivational speaker. He runs a foundation that partners with professional and college teams to put on baseball and hockey camps for disabled kids.

“I try to get kids out and do things, get them out of their comfort zone a little bit,” Clark said. “They start seeing that they can accomplish things they didn’t think were possible.”

A few years ago, Clark reunited with the boy who brought his wagon to school for the field trip. Clark said that boy, Ernie Pound, had no idea how meaningful his action was.

“Even now it grabs me,” Clark said. “He had no idea the impact that what he did had on me. I tell people, do something kind for someone every day, and you may never know how that impacts them. But it will.”

Listen to Susan Olasky’s report on Dave Clark on The World and Everything in It.