Many professional athletes have gone on to music careers, some even as DJs (Shaquille O’Neal, or “DJ Diesel,” comes to mind). But that has not yet led to a situation where famed former MLB player Will Clark is doing a three-hour DJ set at the giant Coachella festival. Indeed, the festival’s Twitter/X account meant to tag prominent British DJ Will Clarke about his set, but instead got “Will The Thrill”:
For his part, Clark was a good sport about it:
Clark shone in college for Mississippi State, teaming with Rafael Palmeiro in a combination known as “Thunder and Lightning.” He also played for the U.S. at the 1984 Summer Olympics, then wne on to a 1986-2000 MLB career with the San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles, and St. Louis Cardinals, where he earned six All-Star nods and the 1989 NLCS MVP award and finished with a .303 batting average, 284 home runs, and 2,176 hits. He’s currently a special assistant with the Giants.
Meanwhile, the Bristol-born Clarke (who now splits time between the UK and Detroit) has put up quite a few hits of his own (although probably not quite as many). Those include “Searching” on his own All We Have Is Now label and “Rock With Me” on Patrick Topping’s Trick. He also hosts a prominent music podcast. But his 18,300 Twitter/X followers are a little ways behind Clark’s 34,600, so perhaps his account showed up lower down when Coachella’s social media team was trying to tag him. At any rate, this adds to a long list of misidentifications on Twitter.
(Update: this post initially had a wrong hits total and NLCS MVP year for Clark, that’s been correct.)
[Will Clark on Twitter/X; Clarke photo from Coachella on Twitter, Clark photo from Sergio Estrada/USA Today Sports]