Former Astro Clark 'very excited' to rejoin coaching staff

This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart's Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, _click here_. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Dave Clark had a front-row seat to Jose Altuve’s first career home run.

In fact, he tried to prevent it.

Clark was the third-base coach for the Astros in 2011 when a diminutive second baseman who posted eye-popping numbers at Double-A was called up, a day after the club traded away starting second baseman Jeff Keppinger. Altuve began his career with a seven-game hitting streak and really hasn’t stopped hitting since.

But it wasn’t until Aug. 20, 2011 -- one month after his MLB debut -- that Altuve hit his first home run. It was an inside-the-park homer at Minute Maid Park off Madison Bumgarner of the Giants. Altuve rocketed a ball off the left-center-field wall, took off for third when it rolled along the warning track and proceeded to run through Clark’s stop sign to score standing up.

“I think my hands were up too high,” Clark said with a loud laugh.

Clark joked about the homer recently upon his return to the team as the Astros’ first-base coach after a decade away from the organization. Altuve, who has since carved out a career that’s on a Hall of Fame arc, is the only member of the club remaining from when Clark was last coaching in Houston (2009-13).

“You saw it in him as a kid, that grittiness, that wanting to be the best,” Clark said of Altuve. “To see that kid mature and become the player he is, I can’t say I would have guessed it would have got to that level, but he’s fun to watch. He really is.”

Clark, 61, played 13 years in the Major Leagues, finishing with the Astros in 1998. In addition to Houston, he has spent time on big league staffs with Pittsburgh (2001-02) and Detroit (2014-20). Clark managed the Astros' Double-A affiliate in Corpus Christi from 2005-07 and Triple-A Round Rock in '08 before he was promoted to third-base coach in '09. He was the team’s interim manager for the final 13 games of the '09 season.

Clark said general manager Dana Brown called him out of the blue a few weeks ago to gauge his interest in returning, and he had an interview with Brown, manager Joe Espada and senior advisor to ownership and baseball operations Jeff Bagwell -- Clark's former Astros teammate -- at Minute Maid Park. He’s excited to get back into a big league uniform for the first time since 2020.

“You know what, it’s very special,” Clark said. “I was rooting for them every time they would play except for when I was in Detroit and we wanted to beat them. I helped develop a lot of those players that were there early. It was fun to be with them at the big league level, and it’s fun to see the organization thrive. For a while there, man, it was bad. It was a rebuild and basically was a tear-down, but they’re reaping the benefits of it now. The organization looks like it’s in really, really good shape now. I’m very excited to get back.”

Clark spent last season managing at Idaho Falls in the Pioneer League, which he said was tough but rewarding work. In 2022, he helped run a Major League Baseball developmental camp in the Appalachian League, based in Johnson City, Tenn. In 2021, Clark said he “did something crazy.” He coached an 18-and-under travel team outside of Memphis, Tenn.

“That was a lot of work,” he said. “We probably played about three or four games a week. I had a lot of guys that didn’t even make the high school teams, so that’s how bad it was. But I will tell you this. They got better. I think I had a roster of like 16 players, and I want to say six or seven ended up getting college scholarships.”

Clark is eager to get to work in Houston and help Espada in his first year as manager.

“He couldn’t have walked into a better situation than with the Houston Astros,” he said. “The fact he knows the organization and knows the players, it’s a perfect situation.”