Like many 12-year-olds, Clark Tarr likes playing baseball about as much as anything in the world. Clark can hardly wait for the season to start every year.

He’s been playing in the Parks and Recreation Leagues since T-ball, and he’s the right fielder for the Royals in the Jhawk Baseball League.

Although Clark shares his teammates’ excitement about baseball, his life experiences have been very different from theirs.

He is deaf and has an unusual genetic kidney disease that has taken away much of the mobility in his legs. For Clark, just being able to be involved with the game at this level is something special.

“He loves being out there, and the kids on the team all treat him really well,” said Cathy Tarr, Clark’s mother.

Clark started losing his hearing sometime before his fifth birthday. At the time, his mother had started to realize that something was different about her son.

“When Clark was about in kindergarten, I would go to the doctor and say that he’s having problems hearing me,” Tarr said.

Before long they made an amazing discovery.

“They found out that he was deaf and had been reading lips, we don’t know how long,” Tarr said.

Although Clark is technically deaf, medical science has helped him regain his hearing.

He wears a Cochlear implant, which stays attached to his head through a magnetic field. The device has a microphone that bypasses his ear and communicates directly with his brain.

Royals right fielder Clark Tarr warms up before his Jhawk baseball league game against the Athletics July 7 at Holcom. Clark is deaf, but wears an implant on his head that allows him to hear.

Cathy Tarr said the implant has changed her son’s life.

“It’s made a huge, huge difference,” Tarr said. “His behavior has improved. His hearing has improved.”

Even with the implant, it took Clark about a year to get used to hearing again. The ears have a natural system for discerning what sounds are important, and his brain had to relearn this process.

No one really knows exactly how well Clark hears now. But his mother is thankful for what he has been able to experience.

“The first Christmas when he was listening to Christmas carols and just seeing the look on his face was very special,” Tarr said. “He can go to the ocean now and hear the ocean.”

Through all the tribulations of Clark’s childhood, baseball has been a constant. Tarr says playing on the team serves an important role in her son’s life.

“It gives him confidence, it helps him socially to interact with his peers,” she said. “It gives him the sense of having a normal childhood where he can forget about all the doctors and the hospital trips and the poking and prodding, and just be a kid.”

He wears a special batting helmet, which in addition to ear holes, has a hole cut out for the microphone on the Cochlear implant.

Clark earned the nickname Flash on the Royals when the coaches thought he was taking too long getting ready in the dugout once and let him know it.

“I’m not the Flash,” Clark responded, and the name stuck.

He’s become known around the dugout for his colorful wit.

“He has a great sense of humor,” said Brad Remington, one of the Royals’ coaches. “He is hilarious.”

Perhaps Clark has figured out the importance of laughter in his youth because, more than most kids, he knows that life is not that easy. He takes 26 pills and receives one shot every day just to manage his health.

“He’s a strong little kid,” his mother said.

And for Cathy, a real estate assistant, and her husband, Clark’s father, Allen, a driver for Frito Lay, the road has certainly not been an easy one.

But, through the stress and uncertainty of dealing with Clark’s medical condition, there is the indescribable happiness of seeing their youngest son grow up and develop before their eyes.

And on the baseball field, Clark seems to have found a home.

“Those coaches and fans are really a good group of people and we’ve been lucky that we’ve experienced that throughout the Parks and Rec system,” Tarr said.