HOUSTON -- The debate was a big one in the Clark family home in Tupelo, Miss., early in 1980. Clara Clark didn¡¯t want one of her nine sons, a budding young boxer named Dave, to travel to Moscow to represent his country in the Olympics.

Meanwhile, Clark¡¯s father, Nathaniel, along with his brothers, his coach and pretty much everyone else in his world, was pushing him to go.

¡°She told me, ¡®Regardless of what you do, son, you're not going. It's crazy over there,¡¯¡± Clark said. ¡°Things weren¡¯t too nice back in those days. And so she was afraid for me to go.¡±

Ultimately, the decision was taken out of Clark¡¯s hands when U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced in April 1980 that the United States was joining 64 other countries in boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Russia to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The decision rippled down to the Clark household, where young Dave was forced to hang up his gloves and scrap his Olympic dreams.

¡°I didn't really know how good I could possibly be,¡± Clark said. ¡°I thought I was pretty good. I could handle myself in the ring, but I never could really see myself doing it professionally, even though I loved it, because of baseball.¡±

Clark¡¯s father was his baseball coach as a kid, so baseball was as much in his veins as boxing. Still, he wasn¡¯t drafted out of high school and was set to join the Marines before Jackson State offered him a scholarship after a strong showing in the Central Illinois Collegiate League in the summer.

Clark went on to be a two-time team Most Valuable Player at Jackson State in 1982-83, was drafted in the first round of the ¡¯83 MLB Draft by Cleveland and wound up playing 13 years in the big leagues, finishing his career with Houston in 1998.

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A long coaching career followed, including time in the Astros organization as Double-A (2005-07) and Triple-A (¡¯08) manager before being promoted to Astros third-base coach in '09 (he was the team¡¯s interim manager for the final 13 games of the '09 season). Clark rejoined the Astros last season as first-base coach.

When you meet Dave Clark, you are reminded he¡¯s probably not a man you should fool with. He stands an imposing 6-foot-2 and isn¡¯t shy about clamping so hard during a handshake that knuckles crack. He can be intimidating, yet personable at the same time.

The middle of 15 children, Clark got his introduction into boxing through the police department in Tupelo when he was 10 years old after an uncle named O.D. Pounds convinced him to lace up the gloves. Pounds was a sparring partner for former heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, and Clark would visit him each year in the Washington, D.C., area. Pounds took him and his brother Louis to a boxing gym and a spark was lit.

¡°I started being in little competitions and this and that,¡± Clark said. ¡°My last year of boxing was my senior year in high school. I did two years of Golden Gloves, my junior and senior year, and of course, that was 1980 when I graduated from high school. That was the year of the boycott, but I was in a lot of Golden Glove tournaments.¡±

Clark won both Golden Gloves tournaments he entered two years in a row in the light heavyweight division and found himself invited to the U.S. Olympic trials.

¡°They grade you certain ways, certain things,¡± he said. ¡°But if you win, of course, you know, you get graded higher. And so I was graded high, and thought I was on my way to the Olympics, to be honest with you.¡±

Louis Clark, a former wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks and current senior director of pro personnel for the Chargers, jokes that he was a better baseball player than his brother, and that his brother was a better football player than him. But when it came to boxing, there was no doubt who had the upper hand.

¡°He was the boxer and I was his punching bag,¡± Louis said. ¡°I was the younger brother -- two years younger than he was. There were four brothers in a row -- he was the third and I was the fourth -- and he wasn¡¯t going to let two older brothers be the punching bag.¡±

Dave Clark amassed a lot of punching bags along the way. He was 26-0 in his career with 13 knockouts, yet no one was able to put him on the canvas. He was never knocked out.

¡°Like my auntie used to tell me, ¡®You can¡¯t hit what you can¡¯t see,¡¯¡± he joked.

Clark¡¯s fighting style was a bit unorthodox in that he could fight with both hands. He was a right-handed thrower and left-handed hitter in baseball, and that dexterity served him well in the ring, too.

¡°My uncle was the same way, and he's the one who taught me,¡± Clark said. ¡°He always told me that if I was able to do that, I could really, really mess up my opponent. I threw a pretty good jab on both sides.¡±

Not surprisingly, Clark¡¯s boxing idol growing up was Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champ considered by many to be the greatest boxer of all-time. One of Clark¡¯s most cherished possessions is a photo of Ali holding his mother in his kitchen. He got the photo from Charles ¡°Teenie¡± Harris, who photographed players of the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords of the Negro Leagues. Harris, who died in 1998, signed the photo.

¡°As a matter of fact, I'm in my office right now, I got a picture of him with [Ali] in the Thrilla in Manila (in 1975), where he's just hit Joe Frazier on the top of the head,¡± Clark said.

Clark¡¯s ability to throw a punch has suited him well on the baseball field a few times, too. He was involved in a few bench-clearing brawls as a player in the big leagues, but there was one while he was in Triple-A in which he earned his 14th career knockout. Clark collided with Pirates catching prospect Ruben Rodriguez while crossing the plate, knocking the ball out of his mitt. As Clark was walking back to the dugout, he heard a teammate say, "Look out!"

¡°I turned and [Rodriguez] swung,¡± Clark said. ¡°I was like, ¡®You gotta be kidding me. Dude, that [collision] was clean.¡¯ It was just a play at the plate. So he swung and I ducked, and I came up and hit it right up under his chin. And, I mean, he came off his feet, man.¡±

These days, Clark doesn¡¯t talk much about his boxing days, but his reputation as one of baseball¡¯s genuine tough guys precedes him.

¡°First of all, I just want people to think of me for who I am, Dave Clark the baseball guy, not Dave Clark the boxer,¡± he said. ¡°Just don¡¯t mess with me. Don¡¯t put me in a bad spot.¡±