If only for a fleeting moment, fans got a peek behind baseball’s leather curtain last week. Yes, Nestor Cortes raised a glove to shield his face when he spoke, because that’s the custom whenever pitchers are protecting vital information on the mound.
This time, though, the Yankees’ pitcher and his catcher, Jose Trevino, were both wearing microphones for the broadcast. Viewers got to hear a pitcher and catcher strategize on how to attack a hitter — to listen in on precisely the conversation every dugout lip-reader is hoping to decode. The breezy back-and-forth lasted all of one batter, a strikeout, but it had the air of a baseball document being declassified.
Yes, the pitcher and the catcher are talking to each other to strategize how they attack the hitters and I can't believe how much I love this.pic.twitter.com/wUTdk2mrgN
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) July 20, 2022
If nothing else, hearing what’s said behind the gloves supported the notion that pitchers might not be so paranoid after all when it comes to the cone of silence they wear on their non-throwing hands. You don’t think the hitter, Austin Riley, would have loved to have had an earpiece for that at-bat?
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Will Clark demonstrated as much during the 1989 National League Championship Series, when he locked his gaze on Greg Maddux during a mound visit and saw him mouth the magic words — “fastball in” — before turning on an inside fastball for a tone-setting Game 1 grand slam.
In the evolution of mound visit paranoia, the case of Clark vs. Maddux still ranks among the most-cited events. But was it the seminal event in glove-talking history? Pinning down the precise origin story is tricky; Jayson Stark dived into the topic years ago and wound up with more theories and dead ends than a search for Bigfoot.
We’ll hear from both parties shortly, but the quick version is that Clark believes that was the tipping point in pitchers covering their mouths with their gloves during mound sessions. (“You’re exactly correct,’’ Clark said.) The quick counter is that Maddux has his own theories about why pitchers now cover their faces with gloves, and his origin story involves some foul language, an annoyed wife and a journeyman outfielder with a mere 20 lifetime home runs.
Rex Hudler, the longtime utility dynamo, leans slightly toward the Clark camp — “They weren’t doing it before that,’’ he said Wednesday. But the Royals television analyst noted that other factors, such as the explosion of camera angles starting in the early ‘90s, put pitchers on alert and denied him a favorite competitive edge. Hudler recalled his own Clark-ian moment, the time he zeroed in on former White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper saying “fastball” during a mound visit.
“And I tagged it. I hit a dinger,’’ Hudler said “Yeah. Gone. And, you know, I told him, ‘Coop! You told me what was coming, man!'”
Hudler remembers that the glove-coverage was so widespread by the time he became a broadcaster in 1999, he regularly had to explain the phenomenon to his audience.
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“I would tell our fans, ‘He doesn’t have halitosis. He just doesn’t want us to read his lips,”’ Hudler said.
Let’s take a deep breath and dive into some key moments in this evolution of baseball protocol. Gloves down so everyone can hear.
— Will Clark (@WillClark22) July 19, 2022
Clark vs. Maddux: Will’s version
Will Clark’s jersey will be retired by the Giants on Saturday, and it makes sense that it will happen before a game against the Chicago Cubs.
Because for five games in the ’89 playoffs, “Will the Thrill” had the Cubs’ number. He batted .650 with a .682 on-base percentage and a 1.200 slugging percentage in propelling the Giants to a 4-1 series victory and their first World Series appearance since 1962.
Along the way, he watched a mound visit that still resonates to this day. It came in the fourth inning of Game 1 of the NLCS under the lights at Wrigley Field on Oct. 4, 1989. The Giants led 4-3 and had the bases loaded with two out.
The quotes from Clark here are from a recorded 2016 interview with this reporter when Clark spoke about his torrid NLCS against the Cubs.
The funny thing is, as he peered out to the mound during that fourth-inning at-bat, Clark wasn’t trying to break the code of how Maddux might pitch to him. He just wanted to see if Cubs manager Don Zimmer would signal for left-hander Paul Assenmacher, who was warming up in the bullpen.
“I didn’t know whether he was going to take Maddux out,” Clark said. “So I’m looking right at the conference on the mound to figure out what’s gonna happen.”
“The Thrill” was already 2 for 2 off Maddux in Game 1, having doubled in a run in the first inning and hitting a solo homer in the third.
Then Zimmer strolled out to the mound in the fourth. In terms of strategic mistakes, Zimmer’s biggest one was standing a mere 5-foot-9.
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“Maddux is standing on the mound and Zimmer has his back to me,’’ Clark recalled. “And he’s quite a bit shorter than Maddux (who is 6 feet), plus (Zimmer) is on the downslope of the mound. So, I can see Maddux.
“I’m looking right at Maddux — right at him — and he goes, ‘fastball in.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ I looked at Kevin Mitchell and said, ‘Did you see what he just said?’”
Mitchell, in a separate phone interview, remembered it well: “Yep. That’s just how it played out … Man, Will is the one who taught me how to read lips. I thought, ‘What is he doing?’ But this man has been reading lips for a long time before I even came over there (to the Giants). He explained that you can see something that pertains to what they’re going to do. You might not read all of it, but you’re going to see something, just as long as you don’t guess wrong.”
In this case, Clark pushed all his chips to the middle of the table. As Clark remembers it, Mitchell asked him, “What are you going to look for?”
“I said, ‘Well, I was gonna look fastball in, anyway. But I’m definitely gonna look now,’’’ Clark said. “And Zimmer leaves Maddux in. He gets off the mound. I go up to into home plate and dig my hole — my little foot hole I normally do. And I thought I’d cut myself short about four inches, so I gave myself a little bit more of the inside corner.”
Watch the replay at 1:21:15 mark and check out how intently Clark watched the scene on the mound before setting up on the remote far edge of the batter’s box.
“And the first pitch was a fastball in,’’ Clark said. “And, in baseball terms: Thank God I didn’t miss it.”
Clark launched the first-pitch heater out to right field for a grand slam, and suddenly the rout was on. The Giants led 8-3 en route to a tone-setting 11-3 series-opening victory. The Giants won the NLCS in five games.
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Then again, Clark didn’t want to give sole credit to his baseball espionage. This was more than a happy accident.
“Let me give you a little heads up to all of this stuff, OK?” he said. “Yeah, I saw him say ‘fastball in’ and, yeah, I was looking fastball in, but I’ll take you back.
“In the first at-bat, (Brett) Butler was on second base and I hit a sinker away to left-center field for a double, and Butler scored. I didn’t see anything ‘in’ during that at-bat.
“In the second at-bat, I go to a 3-2 count. And Maddux throws me a 3-2 changeup and I sort of hooked it out to right-center for a homer. And he didn’t come ‘in’ that at-bat. So we have two at-bats now, and he has not come in on me.”
Clark also noticed that Maddux was taking a different tack with the other left-handed batters in the lineup that day: Butler, Pat Sheridan, Terry Kennedy and switch-hitter José Uribe.
“Maddux is throwing them in. So if he’s throwing three lefties ‘in’ and he’s not throwing one lefty ‘in,’ then what’s the deal here?” Clark said. “Plus, I’m beating to the outside part of the plate. So there has to be common sense in there saying that he’s got to come in sooner or later.”
In other words, Clark already had a substantial case for expecting an inside fastball. The mound visit just removed all reasonable doubt.
“Exactly,’’ Clark said. “It’s a lot better if you can look for one pitch in a certain area and get really fine in what you’re doing. You know what I’m saying? Instead of having to look over 17 inches of home plate, I’m looking over four inches of home plate, and I’m looking for one pitch in one little spot. And I got it.”
It’s important to note here that Clark has no desire to gloat. His respect for Maddux is profound. “He got me out a lot of times, too,’’ he said.
In their regular-season battles, Clark was 11 for 46 (.239) against Maddux with one homer, six walks, 13 strikeouts and a .709 OPS. He’s not bragging now, and he certainly didn’t brag then. Because even after reading lips that day, Clark zipped his own shut. But he said Mitchell let it slip to a few Giants teammates, who let it slip to a few beat writers. Then the legend of lip-reading spread by word of mouth.
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“And then it becomes the big story,’’ Clark recalled. “And then the next year, when I come into spring training, it’s even more of a big story.”
In this version of mound history, word circulated around the league quickly, and by early 1990 pitchers were taking preventative measures.
“And then I see Maddux covering his mouth,” Clark said. “Then I see somebody else covering their mouth. I’m like, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Now you look back and everybody’s doing it.”
Maddux, famously, has a near-photographic memory for pitch sequencing, but he was in no position to confirm or deny much about how he approached Clark in Game 1 of the NLCS. Maddux was only 23 years old in 1989. His brain wouldn’t reach its prime until years later.
“I mean, I didn’t get good till the ‘90s,’’ said the winner of four consecutive Cy Young Awards starting in 1992.
Yes, Maddux recalls the Game 1 performance in which Clark went 4 for 4 with six RBIs. No, he is not haunted by the moment. An interview request to the Hall of Fame media relations department, sheepishly wondering if Maddux might be willing to talk about Clark, was answered quickly and enthusiastically. For one thing, Maddux was happy to hear Giants are retiring Clark’s number. “He was a special player,” the pitcher said in June.
“God, I just remember the grand slam he hit off me, the wind-blown one in the basket,’’ he said. “Because I thought I made a halfway decent pitch, or he missed it just enough. But it still managed to end up in the basket. … I remember it was howling out pretty good. Wrigley’s either the best place in the league to pitch in or the worst. I think that was one of those games where if he got it up in the air, it was going out.”
But regarding the fateful summit with Zimmer, Maddux cast some doubt on just how meaningful that meeting of the minds could have been. Between the time Zimmer stepped out of the dugout to the time he headed back off the mound, all of 31 seconds elapsed.
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“I mean, the conversations with Zim were usually just to kill time to get the bullpen ready,’’ he said. “He never really talked pitch selection or strategy or anything. I remember the first time I ever asked him what I should start this guy off with and he said, ‘I haven’t told you what to throw to a guy all year and I’m not going to tell you now.’ There was never any strategy discussed on the mound.”
Still, he knows Clark’s version of events, about how the first baseman glimpsed the coming attractions straight from the pitcher’s mouth. On that front, the pitcher simply tipped a retroactive cap.
“I never thought of it, really. Until now. I mean, if Will read my lips, then that’s more power to him,’’ Maddux said. “To me, that’s just being heads up. You hear all this talk about cheating in baseball. And you know, that’s not cheating. That’s just finding a weakness from an opponent and using it to your advantage.”
Maddux indeed later took up covering his face with his glove during mound conversations. But he said there are two reasons for that, and neither of them had anything to do with Will Clark.
The first one was personal. Rick Sutcliffe, who is Maddux’s longtime friend and ex-teammate with the Cubs, once told Stark that one of the reasons Maddux started covering his conversations was because, “Greg was a guy who used some profanity from time to time. And finally, his wife (Kathy) told him, ‘If you’re going to say those things when you’re on TV, at least cover your mouth.’”
Maddux confirmed Sutcliffe’s scouting report.
“Yeah, that was true. That happened,” he said with a laugh. “She said, ‘You know, if you’re going to motherf*** the world, you should cover your mouth.’”
But Maddux said that the bigger reason for the glove coverage, and the impetus for its widespread usage around the league, was Curtis Pride, an outfielder with terrific plate discipline who broke in with the Montreal Expos in 1993. Pride, who was deaf, spent 11 years in the big leagues, including many games riding the pine. Pride was a fluent lip-reader, and Maddux says that pitchers around the league were well aware of that.
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“When (Pride) was with Montreal, he could read the lips from the dugout if pitchers didn’t cover their mouths. So that’s kind of where that started,’’ Maddux said. “That was my take on it. I remember my brother (Mike) told me about that: ‘Yeah, he always reads lips when the guys go out there, then tells the coach or the manager exactly what they said.’
“When I started (covering my mouth), I started doing it because of Curtis Pride.”
What people around the league say
Several baseball scribes from The Athletic tossed this question to people on their beat: “When do you remember pitchers league-wide becoming vigilant about hiding their conversations on the mound?”
The answers were inconclusive.
Reds broadcaster Jeff Brantley was teammates with Clark at Mississippi State as well as with the Giants, including on that ’89 team, and he came the closest to endorsing the Maddux at-bat as the epicenter. At the least, he said, pitchers adapted when Maddux started covering his mouth, even if the precise original motivation was unclear.
“I mean, we (pitchers) never even thought about it until he started doing it. Nobody did it. You see it all the time now,” Brantley said. “Somewhere along the line, Maddux saw — because he’s a big studier of the game — he had to have seen someone where he could read their lips. He had to be able to see someone where he could see exactly what they said and I guarantee, he was like, forget that, they ain’t reading my lips.”
One former GM responded to the emailed question immediately to say it was the “classic” Giants-Cubs in the 1989 NLCS — but he recalled the big lip-reading moment as being Clark vs. Les Lancaster. Tim Wakefield, the noted knuckleballer, said he never had to worry about lip-readers because everybody knew what he was throwing, anyway. He suggested it may have started with Mark Fidrych, but was mostly kidding, since Fidrych spoke so demonstrably to the baseball that you could read his lips from space.
The Bird is the word today.
Throughout the day, @MLBNetwork is airing its documentary on Mark Fidrych before showing his complete game on June 28, 1976 vs. the Yankees. pic.twitter.com/mcXx0MemJf
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) March 19, 2020
Rod Allen, the former player and broadcaster, once told a radio audience that he saw the glove-talking practice while playing in Japan in the late 1980s. Peter Morris included that anecdote in his book, “A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball” and went on to say that when Allen returned to the U.S. in 1991, the practice had already caught on in the states.
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Diamondbacks pitching coach Brent Strom saw a photo from a mound visit he made in 2020 and realized he might have gone a bit overboard. This was early in the pandemic, and Strom went out to talk to a pitcher while wearing a mask and still used his hand to cover his mouth.
“I don’t do it anymore. I don’t think I’ve done it. I know a lot of coaches do,” Strom said this week. “One of the things that happened to me, I was in the minor leagues so long that when I did get a chance to get to the big leagues, I forgot about it. Nobody’s watching the minor-league games.
“There were a couple times when I’d be talking to a pitcher and I’d come back in the dugout and some of my fellow coaches would say, ‘We know you’re throwing first-pitch slider,’ or something like that. I had to be aware of myself, that everything is being recorded.”
Hudler, the ballplayer turned broadcaster, gets extra insight during his new life in the booth.
“It wasn’t a thing (when I played). They didn’t have the technology they have now,” Hudler said. “One of the reasons now is all the angles and all the cameras. They know hitters caught up on the lip reading. I used to read the lips of the pitcher and the pitching coach when I was in the batter’s box.”
To demonstrate, Hudler silently said the word “fastball,” but his lips left no doubt.
“How easy is that?” he said.
There will be the customary love letters to Will Clark’s gorgeous swing when the Giants retire his number on Saturday. There will be odes to his role in jolting a dreary franchise back to life starting in 1986.
But for a proper tribute to No. 22, someone really ought to deliver a speech while shielding their face with a baseball glove.
The Athletic‘s Alec Lewis, Rustin Dodd, Chad Jennings, C. Trent Rosecrans and Zach Buchanan contributed to this report
(Top Image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: David Madison, Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
