IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Franklin Community High School alumnus Max Clark to assert himself in the Toledo Mud Hens’ recent six-game series in Indianapolis against the Indians. The left-hander opened the series on July 7 with a towering home run to right field off of Indians’ starting pitcher Connor Wietgrefe. Over the course of the series, Clark would pick up six hits in six starts while playing center field and hitting in the leadoff spot.
“It’s always good to come home,” Clark says before taking batting practice on Thursday, “and with it being right before the all-star break, I get to spend two weeks at home now, so it’s going to be awesome.”
One person among the more than 100 friends and family who were on hand to see Clark play throughout the week was his former high school coach, Ryan Feyerabend. As much as anyone there, Feyerabend wouldn’t have been surprised to see Clark send a pitch into the lawn beyond the right field wall because he’s seen it many times before.
Feyerabend sometimes watched Clark hit as many as 50 home runs in a batting practice session, and he claims that one of those landed around the uprights on the football field. If you go to the stadium where Clark played high school ball, you will quickly notice that there is a significant gap between the baseball stadium and the football field. With the use of measuring instruments, Feyerabend estimated that the bomb in question must have traveled more than 550 feet in the air.
“Sometimes it was annoying, to be honest,” Feyerabend says. “I was like, ‘Can you just hit a few dribblers? They’re running a track meet over there for God’s sake.’”
Because Clark possessed such power as a high school player, he didn’t hit in the leadoff spot, though Feyerabend says he once put him there because of an injury and Clark didn’t like it. Nor did that version of Clark particularly appreciate the number of teams that would just walk him so he didn’t get a chance to hit.
I tracked Feyerabend down at the Friday game, and we had agreed to talk during the second inning, but he was still talking by the fifth. He barely even needed any questions; he just wanted to talk about Clark. And who could blame him? The people who snap our lives out of monotony have that kind of impact.
Feyerabend recounts Clark throwing in the upper 90s as a high school pitcher, and how Clark had the potential to be just as good in football as a quarterback or a wide receiver if he had invested more in the sport.
Feyerabend also knew Clark’s older brother, Mason, before he coached Max, but the future third pick in the 2023 MLB Draft first got his coach’s attention during his freshman season in the spring of 2020. At that time, Franklin Community, like the rest of the state, didn’t play. And yet, every time Feyerabend happened to drive by Clark’s home, he saw Clark in the yard working on his hitting.
During the game, Clark’s mother, Angela Ankney, and his wife, Kayli, both emphasized how humble he is, how much he knows about his teammates, and how much he enjoys the autograph-seeking kids when we heard the type of contact off a bat that makes your eyes dart back to the field.
“Max just hit a home run,” someone says. With one out in the seventh, it was his second in the series. As people stood and cheered jubilantly for the Mud Hens’ center fielder, I almost forgot that we were at an Indians home game. The Indians, by the way, took four of the six series games and currently sit in first place in the International League West for the second half of the season after finishing last during the first half.
As for Max and Kayli, they married this past December before Clark was even 21 years old, and they honeymooned in Saint Lucia, but many of their wedding gifts are still sitting in storage, as Kayli hasn’t been able to join Max full-time yet. For all the hype and enthusiasm that Indianapolis provided for their hometown hero last week, the couple still awaits the right time to buy their first house.
The life of a minor league baseball player involves a lot of geographic change and the uncertainty that comes with the pursuit of getting to the majors. Now in his fourth season, Clark has already played for six teams.
“The biggest jump is the mental side of the game,” Clark explains. “I hit .646 my last year of high school, and my first year in pro ball, I hit .220. I didn’t really know how to fail yet.”
Now Clark is hitting .264 with an on-base percentage of .351 and eight home runs in a game where success is finding a way on base three or four times out of ten. In other words, he seems to be figuring it out, and there’ll be no shortage of local interest if and when he gets that first call-up to the Detroit Tigers.
