For Tom the list lover.
Virtually every mound conversation these days is conducted behind the veil of the players' gloves, for which Will Clark deserves the credit (or blame). In the opening game of the 1989 NLCS at Wrigley Field, San Francisco's Clark was set to bat against the Cubs' Greg Maddux with the bases loaded. Cubs manager Don Zimmer came out to the mound to talk to Maddux.
"I read his lips," Clark told the San Francisco Chronicle years later. "I was standing there adjusting my batting glove, and I had a clear view of Maddux's face. I could see him say 'fastball in' to Zimmer."
Sure enough, Clark hit a grand slam, and the face of baseball was changed forever. When he heard of Clark's trickery, Maddux began covering up his face, and now virtually every pitcher does the same.
2 comments:
I do appreciate these.
I've wondered when that practice began. Leave it to baseball, the best documented slice of life, to pinpoint the exact origin of the ubiquitous glove-to-mouth manuever.
A side comment on Maddux: he was the first all-time great player to ply his craft on Superstations for his entire career, yet he was unlike any other great pitcher in baseball history, in that he was all brains instead of brawn. I think I learned more about the subtleties of the game by watching Maddux work than I could have ever gotten in any other era. I coached t-ball this spring, and one game treated me to a stellar five 1-3 putouts and all I could think was Maddux-to-Grace.
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