Denzel Clarke is Athletic and aerodynamic

The rookie introduces himself to the game by bringing home runs to earth.

Denzel Clarke ran to the wall in left-center and jumped. He came down with two things: the baseball that Nolan Schanuel thought he’d knocked over the fence, and a name.

Clarke made that catch on Monday night in Anaheim. By lunch on Tuesday, he was a known commodity, after 16 games in the majors. His tendency to dance on air was already known by the time he got to the Athletics, because he’d done such things in the minor leagues. Last Friday, Clarke ran down a drive by Baltimore’s Jorge Mateo even though he knew he would plow head-first into Sacramento’s outfield wall. And he stole a home run from Toronto’s Alejandro Kirk before that.

But neither of those dominated cyberspace like this one. Schanuel caught Grant Holman’s 1-and-0 pitch just right, in the first inning, and Clarke’s hard run just seemed like due diligence. Then he elevated, put his right hand on the top of the wall, extended his glove over the wall, snatched the ball, and then twisted around and was able to stick the landing. How the ball stayed in the glove, and how Clarke did all that without bruising himself or the fence, will remain a mystery. Holman saw the catch and put both hands on the top of his cap. Schanuel stared into centerfield as if a dragon were emerging from the fountains.

The Angels’ first baseman dutifully said it was the best catch he’d ever seen, but then he’s only 23. Those old enough to be Schanuel’s grandfather said the same. And maybe it was every bit as good as that. You don’t see a baseball player become Julius Erving and Simone Biles on the same play.

But Mike Trout made almost the same catch in the same place a few years ago. Ken Griffey Jr. had at least a dozen phenomenal hunt-downs, breaking his wrist on one of them. In 1989, the Angels’ Jim Edmonds turned his back to the plate in Kansas City and dived headlong to catch David Howard’s drive. That catch was as impressive horizontally as Clarke’s was vertically.

The most famous catches came in games that meant far more than Angels vs. Athletics in early June. Willie Mays, of course, against Vic Wertz in 1954, but Mays thought he made far better catches elsewhere. One day Mays hit a long home run and Bob Stevens, of the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote, “The only man who could have caught it, hit it.”

Chas McCormick in 2022, Sandy Amoros in 1955 and Ron Swoboda in 1969 all ran down speeding baseballs to help win World Series for the Astros, Dodgers and Mets. Bob Allison, in 1965, might have topped them all with a catch for a Minnesota team that didn’t win.

But none of them introduced themselves to the public by tripping the light as fantastically as Clarke did. He is hitting .216 in the major leagues, but he’s a better bet to sell a ticket than anyone else in the franchise. And that’s good. Defense is how baseball players express their true athleticism, from the way a third baseman contorts to throw out a bunter, to the twinkletoed urgency of a double-play pivot. After all, there’s only a few ways to hit a home run. Clarke’s flights of fancy are all a little bit different. And his wings are only sprouting, at age 25.

“My priority when I’m out there is to go up and catch the ball by any means necessary,” Clarke said. “I don’t think I realize how crazy some of these things are, until I go back and watch the video after. Because I’m like, ‘OK, I really did run into that wall at full speed, or my hips really were above the fence.’’’

Clarke grew up in Pickering, Ontario, just northeast of Toronto. His mother, Donna Clarke, broke national heptathlon records and competed in the L.A. Olympics of 1984. If that sounds familiar, you’ve been paying attention to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the MVP of the NBA, who is also Canadian and who also had a dynamic mom, Charmaine Gilgeous, who ran the Olympic 400 meters for Antigua at Barcelona, 1992.

“Rumor has it that I ran right out of my mother’s womb at the hospital,” Clarke told Baseball America last year.

Clarke was interested in track and field as well, but he was steered toward baseball by Josh and Bo Naylor, his cousins, who now play for Arizona and Cleveland, respectively. Still, he didn’t see a career path until he was 16, when coaches talked him into trying out for the national team. Clarke got a taste of major league stadiums and was even drafted in the 38th round, but made a sunshine decision to play at Cal State Northridge instead. Three years later the A’s took him in the fourth round.

“I’ve never seen an athlete like him,” said Bobby Crosby, a former A.L. Rookie of the Year in Oakland who managed Clarke at Double-A Midland. “It doesn’t matter whether he’s 6–foot-5 or not. He’s a supreme athlete, and he takes pride in how he goes about his routes. He’s very special.”

Being 6-foot-5 helps you scale fences, but it also gives pitchers a nice, plump strike zone to work. In seven minor league seasons Clarke struck out 604 times in 497 games. But that strikeout rate went down when he was at Las Vegas, in Triple-A, and hit .286 in 31 games. Las Vegas, of course, is where the Athletics hope to be playing by 2028.

How long can the echo of one catch resound? When will Clarke be the guy who hits ‘em where nobody but himself can catch ‘em? Time will decide, and the last-place Athletics have a nearly unlimited supply. For the moment they know how their 2025 movie ends. They also know who brings the special effects.