By CHRIS BRANAM
Valley Press Staff Writer
LANCASTER - The pain started creeping through his right side as he was taking a round of batting practice.
Physically, something was wrong with James Clifford. After a bad round of hitting, he slammed his bat into the metal batting cage and flagged down Lancaster JetHawks trainer Troy McIntosh.
Clifford told McIntosh his side was aching. They stretched for a little bit and Clifford stomped back to the clubhouse.
By game time, Clifford's back had stiffened. He refused to let manager Rick Burleson take his name out of the lineup.
In his first at-bat, Clifford hit a home run. He could barely trot around the bases.
Just prior to coming to the plate again, he couldn't even swing a weighted bat in the on-deck circle.
Then Clifford hit his career-high 21st homer in what turned out to be a loss to the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes last week. Clifford left the game after he could barely run out a ground ball in his next at-bat.
That's Clifford.
He absolutely hates to be beaten, especially by his own body. That same drive that kept him in that game is the one that keeps him playing baseball in Class A. . . at 27.
"I'm doing something right to be here," Clifford said last week before he injured his back. "You could look at it as: `He's 27 and still in A ball. What the hell is he doing?' Or you could look at it as `The Mariners must see something.'
"They must want me around for some reason," he said.
Clifford thinks his work ethic and desire have enabled him to outlast other players who were out of the game at a much earlier age.
"He sets a standard for himself," his wife, Kimberley, said. "On the field, he is a very intense and focused leader."
At the time of his injury, Clifford was batting .269 with 21 homers and 67 RBI. He was on pace to establish a career high in RBI and most other offensive categories.
Clifford makes the game exciting for the fan in other ways. In the past month, he broke his bat over his knee after striking out at Rancho Cucamonga and leaped over a fence in an attempt to catch a fly ball at High Desert.
He may be three or four years older than most of the players in the California League, but Clifford doesn't play like it. He hit the first inside-the-park homer in the short history of Lancaster Municipal Stadium last year.
"I've got as much energy as all of these guys," he said. "I'm stronger than 90 percent of the guys in this league. It's not like I'm creaky or physically beat."
Clifford is 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds but he appears to be much bigger than that. His large biceps are the first tipoff that he was an all-conference linebacker at the University of Washington.
Clifford admits he can be intimidating to his teammates.
"I'm a confident person," he said. "What I think, I'm never afraid to say it. Until people get to know me, I am pretty standoffish. I'm not really friendly."
Clifford said he became that way in college, when he couldn't walk across campus without being noticed.
"I tried not to get distracted by things," he said. "I didn't let outsiders influence me at all."
But Clifford did like some of the attention he was getting in college. In his freshman year, he made 164 tackles, including 27 in one game against USC.
He was good and he wasn't afraid to let other people know it. But his whole focus changed when he severely injured his knee during a practice in the fall of 1990.
Clifford sat out most of that season and was only a reserve on the Huskies' 1991 national championship team. The injury made him mentally sharper.
"When I blew my knee out," he said, "it was ready to get over it. Mentally, I still thought I was the toughest (S.O.B.) on the field. I believed that."
While the injury dashed his chance to play in the NFL - he was rated among the top five middle linebackers in the country after his freshman year - Clifford hasn't wallowed in his sorrows.
"I'm lucky," he said. "I've got nine rings at home. Nine rings. I'm lucky to have the family I have."
And if he wouldn't have gotten hurt, Kimberley said she and James probably wouldn't have been married.
"James is a naturally gifted and sincere person," she said. "I met him after he got hurt, and we've talked about what he was like before he got hurt. He said `You probably wouldn't have liked me very much.' "
Clifford admits that he might not have been liked by some of his own teammates.
"I fought every day in practice," he said. "If I made wrong reads, or I made a mistake, I would take it out on the scout team."
In games, Clifford whipped himself into a frenzy.
"He would go completely ballistic," Kimberley said. "He was completely crazy sometimes."
That was the nature of football. But in baseball, Clifford has changed his ways.
"Being the toughest guy in baseball is not going to get you three hits a game," he said. "Baseball is twice as mental as (football). It's more of a controlled-emotion game.
"In football, I played with a rage," he said. "In baseball, I couldn't play with a rage. I'd get distracted by it."
Even though he was late coming into baseball - he only played one year in college before signing as the Mariners' 24th round draft choice in 1992 - Clifford has come to appreciate the game.
"I'm still having a great time," he said. "I've come to realize that the guys I'm around, the manager, that's not what makes it fun for me. It's baseball that makes it fun, period."