Here is a short but important list of the things Brady Clark ’95 was told he couldn’t do: play Division I college baseball. Play professional baseball. Make it to the major leagues. Be a starter.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

For as long as he wanted to be a professional athlete, Clark’s been dismissed by everyone — scouts, sportswriters, analysts, and the all-around know-it-alls who seem to pop up whenever sports are being discussed — as a guy without the tools, or the size, or the speed, or the talent, to be a starter on a major league baseball team.

They all underestimated him.

But proving the critics wrong hasn’t been easy. At every step, Clark has had to prove himself. The breaks have been few, and the setbacks so numerous that at many junctures it would have been easier to give up. But for a guy who’s always been told he can’t, Clark has always been pretty sure — strike that, he’s been absolutely sure — that he can.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon at San Diego’s Petco Park, and the Milwaukee Brewers have the field for practice before the night’s game against the Padres. The sun shines on the fresh grass, the wind breezes through the stadium. The park is quiet, save for some random chatter from the outfield, the occasional crack of the bat and the slap of a ball landing in a glove.

When Brady Clark appears in the visitors dugout, bat in hand, it’s entirely possible to see why, for so many years, he was overlooked by the baseball establishment. A lanky 6-foot-2, 200 pounds, he’s not an imposing figure. At 32, he’s middle-aged for a baseball player, but his youthful face makes it easy to picture him getting carded at a bar. The bat in his hands somehow seems oversized. It doesn’t look like he could use this bat to become one of the top hitters in the National League, which is exactly what he’s done.

In a world full of swagger, Clark is calm and quiet. He doesn’t make much eye contact, preferring to gaze out at center field, as if taking stock of the territory he’ll patrol this evening. In the midst of a breakthrough season as the leadoff hitter for the Brewers, he looks about as far from self-important as the outfield wall looks from home plate.

Clark wears his cap pulled low as he watches his teammates take batting practice. If you described him to a friend, you’d probably start with something like “low-key.” He turns that bat over and over in his hands, as if itching to get out there and take a few cuts.

When Clark does talk, it’s clear why he’s finally has taken his rightful place among the ranks of the top major leaguers. He believes. And his faith in himself is unwavering.

“I never doubted myself, so I was persistent,” says Clark. “My belief in knowing what I was capable of doing kept me going — that and my love of the game.”

Many times, Clark was the only one who believed. He was always athletic, but he never looked much like a stereotypical jock. As a kid, he was into gymnastics, skiing, basketball, football and, of course, baseball. But he always had something to prove.

Case in point: As a sophomore at Sunset High School in Beaverton, Ore., Clark weighed in at an unimpressive 145 and stood 5-foot-7. But he was convinced he had the tools to be the football team’s starting quarterback. Who did this short, skinny kid think he was? But Clark believed. He weeded basketball out of his activities, focused on football and baseball only. And when senior year rolled around, he took the field as the team’s starting quarterback.

The lesson Clark learned from football was fortuitous when it came to baseball. Although he turned in a solid high school performance on the diamond, Clark was overlooked by the major colleges. That might have been it, had he not been so confident.

“I had the desire to play the game, so I knew I had to find a way,” he says. “At the time, it was something I had to explore, to see how far I could go.”

So in the fall of 1990, Brady and his father, Steve Clark, put together a homemade press kit and sent it to 40 or 50 colleges. A couple of smaller schools in the Northwest offered scholarships, but Clark wanted to be where the climate would allow him to play year-round. Father and son hit the road, and in the midst of their travels, stopped by USD and talked to then-coach John Cunningham.

“All we were asking for was the opportunity for Brady to perform, to show what he could do,” says Steve Clark. “In Brady’s mind, that one chance was all he needed.”

One chance was all Cunningham was willing to offer.

“Brady and his dad said that he’d come to USD as long as he got an opportunity to play,” says Cunningham. “I couldn’t promise him playing time or even a roster spot, but I did promise that he’d get the same opportunity as anyone else to make the team.”

So Clark came to USD as a non-scholarship, walk-on player. He played well enough in the fall of 1991 to make the team, and started the season as a backup. To make money, he did the team’s laundry.

But Cunningham had an unofficial rule about bench players. If they came in and got a game-winning hit, they’d start the next game. After spending the first 10 games on the bench, Clark got his chance. He came in as a pinch hitter and nailed down a Torero victory. True to his word, Cunningham penciled Clark into the starting lineup for the next game.

He should have used pen, because Clark started every game for the rest of the season.

The walk-on hopeful went on to start almost every game for the rest of his time as a Torero. After earning a scholarship spot as a sophomore, Clark posted an impressive .307 batting average over his four years at USD and was selected First Team All-West Coast Conference as a senior, when he lead the team in home runs and RBIs.

All in all, Clark turned in an outstanding college career. When he didn’t get drafted by a major league team after his junior year, he shrugged it off.

“Coach Cunningham really stressed the importance of finishing school,” says Clark, who majored in business. “I liked the idea of that, because it allowed me to go after my dreams with something to fall back on.”

But those dreams were about to be shattered.