Dad Clarke never married. He had no children.
But, baseball fans called him Dad, reporters called him Dad, everyone called him Dad, although his given name, which was given in 1865, was William.
Public Domain
Dad Clarke, circa 1888.
He is the only childless “Dad” I know.
I wonder if that seemed peculiar to him? To be a Dad in name only?
There are a lot of dads in baseball. The lower-case, fathers-with-children kind. Some ballplayers today have kids like other people have Tupperware. Just lots of kids. Preternaturally fertile, these players.
(Full disclosure: I am a kidless writer. I do not know beans about parenting. But, I had a dad, and I called him Dad, so I’m confident that I’m qualified to write this.)
There are only a handful of ballplayers who, over the years, were known primarily as “Dad.” Not as a sometime nickname, but as the name that overrode the name they were given.
Or, were there?
The Baseball Bloggess 