Will Clark, Greg Maddux and the lip-reading that (allegedly) changed baseball

Sub required.

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?

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!’”