Here is a copy of a note I posted to the calculus newsgroup on clocks. Practically everthing runs counterclockwise.
Horse races run counterclockwise, baseball is counterclockwise.
Even in mathematics counterclockwise is the positive direction when measuring angles. There are several guesses at an answer to this, but its probably just an accident of agreement. Early clocks didn't have numbers, they just gonged once an hour. Even after they had numbers, some clocks ran backwards. However, by the 1700s clockwise was the agreed upon direction for clock hands to move.