Before he became a very good baseball player and an even more successful high school coach, Phil Clark was proficient in the game of cup ball.

As described by Clark’s longtime friend Jeff Hopkins, the game consisted of little kids like Clark procuring a cup from the concession stand, filling it with dirt and then fashioning it into a ball which was then hit with a stick. 

The game probably wasn’t invented in Frayser but Frayser kids like Clark — and Hopkins who preceded him by a few years — were the most proficient at it.

Phil Clark, Shelby County baseball legend, has died

“I was 12 years old playing little league baseball,” said Hopkins, who went on to much success at both the University of Memphis and Collierville High. “I’d look behind the dugout and him and his friends who were seven or eight years old were playing cup ball. Every time I played, they were back there playing cup ball ... back in the 50s, 60s and early-70s, (Frayser) was a baseball-playing community.

“There were a lot of guys who went on to success.”

None more so than Clark, who died Sunday at the age of 68 after a long battle with colon cancer.

In a career that saw him coach at three different local high schools, Clark won state championships at each. He compiled close to 1,000 career victories and is a member of just about every hall of fame that was available to him.

“He was like Bear Bryant,” said Hopkins, referencing a well-known saying about the legendary Alabama football coach. He could take yours and beat his and he could take his and beat yours.

And if Clark needed to go full-Junction Boys mode to get his points across, he would do that too.

“He managed everything in your life,” said Collins Day, who coaches football and baseball at Houston High and was a star player under Clark at Germantown High in the early 1990s. “When I committed to Memphis he made me go get a haircut. He took me back four times because it was still too long.”

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That was Clark. A God-fearing man who wouldn’t hold back with the choice of words if they were needed to get his point across. A tireless networker who — more than perhaps anyone — helped grow the sport of baseball across the state. A family man who would lend you his if needed. 

A proud son of that Frayser soil who made it big, starting at Memphis State University. 

Clark played basketball and baseball at Frayser High while also playing for American Legion baseball teams coached by Hopkins, who by then was in college and establishing his career in the dugout. After two seasons at Jackson State (Tenn.) Community College, he signed with the Tigers ahead of the 1977 season.

“I know he caught at Memphis; I know he played third at Memphis,” said Hopkins. “But he could play just about any position but pitcher and shortstop. And (even) if you hit a ball at him at shortstop, he’d catch it. And he could hit; he could hit in the clutch.

“But he was also a thinker. He knew what to do and when to do it as a player.”

Clark made an instant impact for Bobby Kirkpatrick’s Tigers. As a junior, he batted .316 while helping the team to a then-program record 34 victories. The following season was even better; Memphis went 40-9 in 1978 — advancing to the NCAA South Regional championship game — as Clark batted .328.

After graduation, Clark moved into coaching as he took over the program at Sky View Academy. Located in Frayser, Sky View closed in 1993. But under Clark, the program was a small-school powerhouse, winning state titles in 1981 and 1986 and finishing runner-up two other seasons. 

Clark himself still wasn’t even 30 years old. But he was already beginning to impact young lives like those of Chris Duncan, who starred at Sky View alongside his younger brother Jeff, who was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in 1990.

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“My dad died my sophomore year, which was 1984,” said Duncan, who spent many years as Arlington High’s principal and is now an assistant at Bolivar Central.

“He was like a dad to Jeff and (me). I needed it. I was an angry individual with my dad dying. He was dad, coach, friend, all of the above to us back then. Of course, Sky View was a close-knit community but Phil was one of those who made a close-knit family everywhere he went.

“You could know him for 20 years or you could not know him at all. He’d treat you just the same.”

That sense of community continued at his next stop, Germantown. With Clark in the dugout, the Red Devils sent dozens of players to college while finishing as runner-up three times in Tennessee’s largest public school classification. Germantown won state titles in 1995 and 2001. 

That 1995 season was the pinnacle.

With players such as All-American shortstop Jay Hood, future SEC infielder Chris Lotterhos and several others who would go on to play in college, Clark knew he would have a formidable squad. As the season progressed and the victories piled up, he began a weekly ritual.

Each Tuesday morning at about 6:15, Clark would stop at a gas station on the corner of Summer and Sycamore View, plunk down his 50 cents for a copy of USA Today and turn immediately to the national rankings. The Red Devils really began to attract attention following their victory in the Upper Deck Classic in Anaheim — at the time, the most prestigious prep tournament in the country.

Germantown eventually made it to No. 1 and stayed there, capping off a remarkable 38-0 season with a victory over Montgomery Bell Academy in the state championship game. The Red Devils were crowned national champions by USA Today, Collegiate Baseball and Baseball America magazines and the Baseball Coaches Association.

Houston High boys soccer coached by Mike Irby in 1999 and 2000 and the 2017 girls team led by David Wolff are the only other teams from Shelby County to have ever been recognized as national champions. The near-impossibility of ending a baseball season without a loss, however, is something that Clark took great pride in when speaking to a reporter back in 2020.

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“They just did what they had to do,” he said. “They just all seemed to get big hits. There wasn’t anything special about them, other than the results. I don’t think there’s ever been another No. 1 team in America that’s been undefeated. The best teams ... all of them lost a game or two.

“I’m like the (1972) Miami Dolphins. I don’t care who wins the national championship as long as there’s at least a 1 (loss) by their name.”

Germantown’s 2001 title-winner featured a young assistant coach by the name of Jeff Munier. After a stint as the head coach at Tunica Academy in Mississippi, Munier decided to move to Memphis to further his career, landing a spot on the staff at Christian Brothers University.

But when Clark had an opening at Germantown, the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“Coming into Memphis, you hear Phil Clark,” said Munier, now the coach of Collierville’s perennially-strong program.

“He’s the guru of high school baseball. I wanted to find a way to get around him and learn from the best ... when he talked, everyone was listening. When we were at coaching clinics, we’d be up in his room talking baseball the whole time. Next thing you know, it’d be three o’clock in the morning.

“But all eyes and ears were on him.”

Munier quickly became part of the Clark family as well.

“His mom and dad were always there supporting him,” he recalled. “When we won the state championship in 2001, everybody had their family around. I was a young guy and his dad came up to me and said ‘Well, since you don’t have anybody here, I’m going to give you a hug first.’”

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From Germantown, Clark moved to Bartlett High where he put an exclamation mark on his legendary resume. The Panthers won a state championship in 2007 while finishing in second place in both 2006 and 2008.

In total, Clark’s coaching record reads 933 victories, 295 losses, five state titles and seven runners-up. His victories are the third most in Tennessee high school history, trailing only longtime CBHS coach Buster Kelso (1,174 and still counting heading into 2025 as the co-head coach at Lausanne) and Lipscomb Academy’s Ernie Smith, who retired in 2018 with 951.

He was named state coach of the year on five occasions and in 1996 was named national coach of the year by the U.S. Olympic Committee. In 1999, Clark led Team USA to the gold medal in the IBA World Junior Championships held in Taiwan.

He’s a member of the TSSAA, Tennessee Baseball Coaches Association and Baseball Coaches Association Halls of Fame as well as Memphis Amateur Sports and the University of Memphis M Club halls. His No. 5 was retired by the Tigers in 2011.

After leaving the dugout, Clark channeled his boundless energy and enthusiasm and endless list of contacts into the field of administration. In his 10 years as athletic director — ending with his retirement in 2013 — he oversaw the massive renovation project that made Bartlett High’s athletic facilities the envy of many schools.

Much of that was accomplished the old-fashioned way. Clark would show up on cold calls at businesses throughout the community, tell them what was going on at Bartlett and convince those in charge that they needed to donate money to be a part of it.

“I’ve seen him do it,” said Day. “He would get out of his truck and go to businesses. Door to door. He would talk to people; that’s what he was good at. And you see what Bartlett looks like now. It’s amazing.”

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His impact extended well beyond the schools he coached and the communities in which he served too. During his career, Clark founded the TBCA, whose annual Coach of the Year award will be named in his honor going forward. 

And several area teams this spring are expected to honor his memory by wearing a helmet sticker drawn up by Houston coach Lane McCarter, which features the letters “PC” and a certain horned livestock animal.

The GOAT. Coach. Mentor. Visionary. Salesman. Clark was all of those and more. Many of which manifested themselves far from public view.

Munier was on his staff at Germantown for just two years but thought so much of his time with Clark that the older coach was in the younger one’s wedding. When Munier got the head coaching job at Olive Branch after leaving the Red Devils, Clark was in the stands to cheer him on.

Then there were the young men like Duncan and Day who sometimes needed so much. Clark was always there to push just the right button.

“Coach Clark would always ride you because he wanted you to be the best,” said Day, who starred in football and baseball at Germantown before going on to play the latter sport at Memphis State.

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“For me, getting on (my rear end) always worked. One time I dove for a ball — I had no business diving for the ball — and it goes in the gap and now it’s a triple. I think Mickey (former Germantown ace Mickey Callaway) was on the mound.

“I go back to the dugout and he goes ‘(Doggone it) boy, I’ve told you a million times. You think you can make every (bleeping) play? Get down and keep it in front of you.’ And I looked up and said ‘Hey, I (bleeped) up alright?

“And he goes ‘You’re (darn) right you did.’ He’d get on me and cuss me. I wore sunglasses and I’d be steaming behind those glasses and he never saw it. But he’d give you all he (had).”

But there was another side to Clark too, one that drew him even closer in his later years to steadfast friends like Bartlett city alderman Brad King — a former Frayser High football standout — and Hopkins. Both men paid frequent visits to Clark and his wife, Donna, in the final weeks and days of his life when the twin demons of cancer and Crohn’s disease became too much to bear.

Hopkins would encourage Clark with thoughts of baseball's future, telling him he needed to get better so they could stand together along the left-field line and watch Bartlett play Collierville like they had so many times in the past.

“He fought a valiant fight,” Hopkins said. “At the end I was just praying God have mercy on him because he was suffering quite a bit.” 

Hopkins was adamant on another point; he was happy to share his thoughts but he wants this story to be about Phil Clark and Phil Clark only. Day said something similar and the others would no doubt agree.

But the story of Phil Clark can’t be told without mentioning the people he impacted, the lives he touched. Clark’s story is the story of baseball in Shelby County over the last 50 years or so and it will continue with those he leaves behind.

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Those who were there at the beginning and those who were there at the end. Or both. Like Hopkins. 

“One of the things I’ll never forget — and it’s one of the highlights of my life,” Hopkins said. “He sponsored me in a faith walk through Faith Baptist Church. It was a week-long faith walk, very spiritual, and he had gone through it as a Christian.

“He sponsored that for me and it was a very special week. Phil and his wife, I didn’t realize they had sponsored me until the very last day of the trip. We were having a dinner and everyone was praying and we lifted our heads up and there was Phil Clark and Donna.

“Standing next to me.”

Visitation for Phil Clark will be held on Jan. 31 from 5-8 p.m. with funeral services the following day at 1 p.m. Both will take place at Ellendale Baptist Church, located at 3861 Broadway Road in Bartlett.