Critical ops funny moments
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.īecause for five games in the ’89 playoffs, “Will the Thrill” had the Cubs’ number. Let’s take a deep breath and dive into some key moments in this evolution of baseball protocol. He just doesn’t want us to read his lips,”’ Hudler said.
“I would tell our fans, ‘He doesn’t have halitosis. 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. And, you know, I told him, ‘Coop! You told me what was coming, man!'” 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. 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. Rex Hudler, the longtime utility dynamo, leans slightly toward the Clark camp - “They weren’t doing it before that,’’ he said Wednesday. (“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.
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. 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.
Maddux still ranks among the most-cited events. In the evolution of mound visit paranoia, the case of Clark vs. 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. You don’t think the hitter, Austin Riley, would have loved to have had an earpiece for that at-bat? 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. 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.
The breezy back-and-forth lasted all of one batter, a strikeout, but it had the air of a baseball document being declassified.
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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. This time, though, the Yankees’ pitcher and his catcher, Jose Trevino, were both wearing microphones for the broadcast. 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. If only for a fleeting moment, fans got a peek behind baseball’s leather curtain last week.