Gaylord Perry

1938-

American baseball player

Gaylord Perry has held many distinctions—in 1982, he was the oldest player in the major leagues; he was also the fifteenth pitcher in the game's history to record 300 lifetime victories. He's played in All-Star games representing both the American and National leagues, taken home two Cy Young Awards (the first player to do so in both leagues), and in 1991 was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But if the right-hander were remembered in no other way, Perry could well go down in baseball history as the "king of the spitballs."

A native of Williamston, North Carolina, Perry was preceded in birth by his brother, Jim, who also ended up in the Major Leagues. The young family resided in a tenant farming community, where the baseball-happy brothers spent their after-school time either harvesting in the fields or practicing their pitches. "We just pitched until we got tired," Perry later wrote in his book, Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession "And a desire to win just developed naturally. I believe the long hot hours in the fields gave Jim and me a physical and mental discipline that has helped us on the mound."

Perry was introduced to organized ball in high school. As a member of the Williamston High team in his freshman year, he threw two shutouts on the way to winning the state championship. The youngster continued to develop over the next few years; by the time he was a junior, Perry had completed five no-hitters and allowed not a single earned run. Lured to the semipros before his senior year, Perry played in Alpine, Texas, where he developed some new moves, including his curve and a side-arm delivery. On his graduation in 1958, Perry was signed by the San Francisco Giants for what was then a record amount for a rookie: $91,000. He quickly sent $30,000 to his parents to help them pay for their home, devastated by a hurricane a year earlier.

Minor Setbacks

The young pitcher reported to the Giants' farm club in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where he posted a 9-5 win-loss record. At the end of the 1958 season Perry, who wished to explore a college career, enrolled in Campbell Junior College in Buies Creek, North Carolina. At six-foot-four, Perry had been admitted on a basketball scholarship, but Perry was soon compelled to leave the school after the Giants decreed that he could not play basketball while a member of their organization.

So Perry took to the road, following his franchise into the minor leagues. Four years of developing his arm in the minors led him to San Francisco, where in 1962 Perry was given his first shot at a Major League game. He won three games for the Giants before being sent back to Tacoma, Washington, to complete the '62 season. But by 1963 Perry was back in San Francisco in what he described as his worst season. In thirty-one games he posted only one win, with a relatively high 4.03 earned-run average (ERA).

Chronology

The year 1964 turned out to be a watershed one for Perry: it was the year he learned the spitball. Illegal in the majors, a spitball has the pitcher coating the ball with saliva or some other slick substance. The doctored ball will thus become an extreme "sinker" as it approaches the plate. Bob Shaw, a spitball expert, had joined the Giants organization and instructed Perry in the basics, which include how to hide the presence of the banned ball from "four umpires, three coaches, and twenty-five players on the field as well as spying executives up on the box seats," as he later wrote in his autobiography. The key, Perry noted, was in the use of the fingers: "Those days you were allowed by the rules to lick your fingers as long as you wiped them dry. A great decoy was going to the resin bag after licking your first and second fingers. You bounced the dusty bag all around in your pitching hand, but those two fingers never got a touch of dry resin."

The Spitball Artist

Among the 1964 games that featured a Perry spitball was the notable "longest day," a marathon May 31 double-header pitting the Giants against the New York Mets that culminated in a twenty-three-inning second-game tiebreaker. After taking the mound in the thirteenth inning, Perry began wetting his fingers in the fifteenth inning. In the twentieth inning, an unidentified Giants player slipped Perry a round, brown tablet. "That was my first taste of slippery elm," Perry later wrote. "The juice in my mouth was slicker than an eel's." With the Mets unable to claim a run off the juiced-up baseball, the Giants won the game 8-6.

At the same time, Perry's legitimate pitching improved. He finished 1964 with a 12-1 record, and after a 1965 slump of 8-12, came back even stronger in 1966, posting twenty-one wins in twenty-nine games and serving as the winning hurler in that year's All-Star game. The next year brought a challenge to Perry's signature spitball: the new league rules banned wetting the fingers before a throw. That led to the "greaseball," a collection of liquids and semisolids intended to make Perry's pitches even more intimidating. There was the mudball, the sweatball, the K-Y (jelly) ball, and the Vaseline ball; Perry claimed he must have "tried everything on the old apple but salt and pepper and chocolate-sauce topping."

By the late '60s the athlete, at age thirty, was firmly established on the mound. Never known for his batting prowess, Perry nonetheless made good on an unusual prediction. In 1962, according to a Sports Illustrated article, Giants then-manager Alvin Dark predicted "there will be a man on the moon" before Perry hit a home run. On August 4, 1969—thirty-four minutes after the U.S. manned spacecraft Apollo 11 made its historic first moon landing-Perry hit his first home run.

In 1971 Perry was traded to the Cleveland Indians—the first of many transfers that would later mark his career. He pitched for Cleveland starting in 1972, posting a 24-16 record. Over the next three seasons his performance varied, from a 19-19 record in 1973 to a less-than-stellar 2-9 record in 1975, during which time Perry was traded to the Texas Rangers. His game improved initially (12-8 during the remainder of '75), then slumped in subsequent seasons to 15-14 in 1976 and 15-12 in 1977.

Time Catches up with a Pitcher

In 1978 Perry was pushing forty—an old pro in a young man's game. He was traded to the San Diego Padres and quickly put to rest any implication that he was past his prime, pitching a 21-6, 2.72 ERA season and leading the National League in wins. But Perry reportedly wasn't happy with San Diego, a team he regarded as lacking in ambition. The pitcher responded in kind, letting his win-loss record slow to 12-11 in 1979. Over the next year the pitcher ping-ponged from San Diego, back to Texas, then to the New York Yankees, who acquired Perry in late 1980.

Perry became a free-agent in late 1980, and chose to sign with the Atlanta Braves; a players' strike that year shortened his season to 8-9, with a 3.93 ERA. He was released from that team at the end of the 1981 season. By now nearly forty-four years old, branded as a spitball artist, and known for a fiery temperament that sometimes alienated his teammates, Perry seemed an uncertain prospect for future employment. But in 1982 Seattle Mariners did sign the pitcher at a cost of $50,000, a fraction of what Perry had earned playing for Atlanta.

Awards and Accomplishments

Where Is He Now?

Gaylord Perry's retirement from baseball took the former pitcher and his family to Martin County, North Carolina. Perry began a new life as a farmer, as his parents had been, growing corn, soybeans, tobacco and peanuts. Unfortunately, the widespread misfortune endured by many farmers in the 1980s affected Perry; in 1986 he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, explaining simply, "It's a farm situation." On a brighter note, in 1991 Perry was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

The year turned out to be one of highs and lows for Perry. He recorded his 300th career win on May 6, after beating the New York Yankees 7-3. But the occasion was also notable for three inspections of Perry's baseball looking for signs of tampering. No evidence was found that day, but two months later, in a game against the Boston Red Sox, an umpire ruled that Perry had doctored the ball, fining him $250 and suspending him for ten days. But Perry's signature spitballs did have an influence on the Mariners, helping lift the struggling team from the ratings basement to land in fourth place in the American League West.

If Perry's best days were behind him—he hadn't posted an ERA under 3.0 since 1978—he continued to show his determination, playing for Seattle and, in late 1983, for the Kansas City Royals. Time writer Tom Callahan characterized Perry, at nearly forty-five, as "the most elderly player in either league." But the pitcher had few doubts about his ability to keep playing. "For me, it's a pretty good job and it pays well—that's why I'm still playing," he remarked to Callahan. At the end of the 1983 season Perry retired from professional play, having posted 314 wins in twenty-two years in big-league baseball representing both the American and National leagues. He and his brother, Jim, held a record as the winningest pitching siblings until 1987, when brothers Phil and Joe Niekro took the title.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Address: c/o Baseball Hall of Fame, P.O. Box 590, Cooperstown, NY 13226-0590.

Career Statistics

SELECTED WRITINGS BY PERRY:

Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession, Saturday Review Press, 1974.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

(With Bob Sudyk) Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession. Saturday Review Press, 1974.

Periodicals

Callahan, Tom." As Good as Anyone Ever." Time. (August 22, 1983).

"Dark Prophecy." Sports Illustrated. (July 19, 1993).

Wulf, Steve. "Commotion in the Hall." Sports Illustrated. (January 21, 1991).

Sketch by Susan Salter