So long to the great spitball artist.
Baseball Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry, who won 314 games in the majors while confounding and infuriating opposing batters, managers and umpires constantly accusing him of doctoring his pitches, died Thursday. He was 84.
Perry died of natural causes at his home in Gaffney, S.C., according to Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler.
A born and bred North Carolina farm boy who grew up in rural Williamston, N.C., working the tobacco, corn and peanuts fields with his older brother, Jim, on their parents’ 25-acre parcel of land, Perry was a workhorse starting pitcher across 22 seasons with eight different teams. He logged the sixth-most innings (5,350) in history, eighth-most strikeouts (3,534), along with 303 complete games, 53 shutouts and won two Cy Young Awards.
Throughout his career, however, Perry could not escape the persistent accusations of throwing spitballs — which he never actually denied. Rather, he seemed to delight in flaunting and flummoxing the baseball establishment and, in fact, was only once — on Aug. 23, 1982 — ejected from a game (by home plate umpire Dave Phillips) for throwing two allegedly illegal pitches. It was perhaps because of his reputation as a cheater, it took Perry three years before being elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association in 1991 (with 77.2%), despite his long career of pitching excellence and endurance, in which he won 20 games five times, three times leading the league in victories (23 in 1970, 24 in 1972 and 21 in 1978) and twice in innings (325 1/3 in 1969 and 328 2/3 in 1970). Perry was also selected for five All-Star teams and his 43.9% completion rate in his starts is the highest of all the 300-game winners since World War II.
According to Perry in his 1974 memoir “Me and the Spitter” with Bob Sudyk, he first learned how to throw a spitter in 1974 with the Giants from Bob Shaw who’d come over to San Francisco in a trade from the Braves that winter. Perry, who signed out of high school with the Giants in 1958 for a $60,000 bonus (half of which he gave to his father to help save the farm), was in his third season in 1964 but still struggling to make the San Francisco rotation when the veteran Shaw taught him how to discreetly wet his two fingers on top of the ball and enabling it to sharply break downward at the last split second. It wasn’t until May 23 that season when Perry first was able to make liberal use of his new pitch while throwing 10 innings of shutout relief in a 23-inning game against the Mets at Shea Stadium. He continued to pitch near-flawless relief through June before joining the Giants rotation in July and finishing with a 12-11 record and 2.25 ERA.
In 1966, Perry began a streak of 10 straight seasons in which he won 15 or more games, including 1972 — the year after the Giants traded him to the Indians (for the hard-throwing/hard-living “Sudden” Sam McDowell) — when he won his first Cy Young Award with a major league-leading 24 wins and 29 complete games along with a 1.92 ERA over 342 2/3 innings. On Sept. 17, 1968, he hurled the only no-hitter of his career, a 1-0 Giants win against Bob Gibson and the Cardinals which took only one hour and 40 minutes to complete.
All the while Perry found himself constantly subjected to accusations, harassment and body searches from umpires and opposing managers convinced he was cheating, especially after joining the American League. In an early-season game against the A’s in 1972, Oakland manager Dick Williams had Perry strip-searched and ordered to change shirts. Another time, then-Rangers manager Billy Martin brought a bloodhound to a game to sniff the baseballs Perry had used, while in June 1973 Yankee manager Ralph Houk actually charged out of the dugout to the mound, pulled the cap from Perry’s head, heaving it down on the ground and kicking it.
For his part, Perry periodically made sly references to the different substances — Vaseline, K-Y Jelly, Slippery Elm tablets, pine tar — for which pitchers used to cheat, always with the idea of getting into the batters’ heads. But though all the inspections he was made to endure no one ever found anything on him. “I reckon I tried everything on the old apple but salt and pepper and chocolate sauce topping,” he jokingly professed in his book, “but of course I’m reformed now. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
After spending six years in the American League with the Indians and Rangers, Perry was traded back to the National League, to the Padres in 1978, and proceeded to have, at age 40, one of his greatest seasons. He led the league in wins (21-6), becoming the third hurler in history to win 20 games for three different teams — and became the oldest pitcher (to that point) to win the Cy Young Award, as well as the first in both leagues. However, his frequent criticisms of his teammates’ defensive play behind him (which had also been the case in Texas), made for a short stay in San Diego. He was traded back to Texas in February 1980 and he made two other stops, to the Yankees and Braves, before he was finally able to achieve his 300th win for the Mariners, a 7-3 complete game against the Yankees, May 6, 1982.
Perry was also a notoriously bad hitter (141 for 1,076, .131), although he didn’t appear to be in his rookie spring training with the Giants in 1962 when San Francisco Examiner columnist Harry Jupiter spotted him hitting a couple of balls over the fence. “That Perry kid’s gonna hit some home runs for you,” Jupiter said to Giants manager Alvin Dark.
“There’ll be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run,” Dark replied.
Dark was right, although just barely. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin emerged from their Apollo 11 space capsule and walked on the moon at 1:17 p.m. Pacific Daylight time. An hour later, Perry hit the first homer of his career, against the Dodgers at Candlestick Park, San Francisco.
Perry’s brother Jim also pitched 17 years in the big leagues, mostly with the Indians and Twins, compiling a 215-174 record, and between them their 529 victories are the second-most all time by brothers behind the 539 by Phil and Joe Niekro. Perry finished his career in 1983 with a 314-265 record and 3.11 ERA. In 2015, the Giants retired Perry’s No. 36 jersey and a year later they erected a statue in his honor outside AT&T Park in San Francisco.
Perry is survived by his wife, Deborah, and daughters Amy, Beth and Allison. His first wife, Blanche, was killed in an automobile accident in 1987.
