SERMONS FROM THE MOUND : Fellow Pitchers Throwing Support Behind Joe Niekro

Pitcher Joe Niekro got caught with that emery board because, he said, he wanted to file his fingernails between innings of the Minnesota Twins’ game against the Angels Monday night at Anaheim Stadium.

Gaylord Perry said that should have been good enough for the umpires, who ejected Niekro for using “a foreign object” to illegally deface the baseball, and American League President Bobby Brown, who suspended Niekro Wednesday.

“It was in his pocket,” said Perry, who won more than 300 games and two Cy Young Awards with the help of the illegal spitball. “I don’t think he got caught. Nobody saw him do it (scuff the ball). I never thought of using it (an emery board). I might make a comeback.

“He had a good excuse. I’ve called time out during games and had the trainer come out to file my fingernails. It’s a legitimate reason. If your fingernails split, you can be out for a couple of days.”

Perry, then with the Seattle Mariners, was suspended for 10 days and fined $250 in 1982 for throwing a spitter against the Boston Red Sox. He was ejected after throwing a pitch that dropped drastically in the seventh inning. He had been warned just two innings before.

“I took a polygraph test on the F. Lee Bailey (television) show that said I was innocent,” Perry said. “Of course, I didn’t talk about the seventh inning when I got caught.”

Perry, who retired from baseball in 1983 at 45 after 21 years in the majors, said he learned the spitball in 1964.

“It was called survival,” he said. “I was 1-6 in 1963. So, I learned the spitball in ’64. I learned it from Bob Shaw (of the Giants), who was one of the best.

“I had to make (hitters) believe I was doing something. It’s more psychological than anything else. When Don Drysdale was pitching, guys would worry more about his hat, glove and belt than they would about him.”

Perry is now the baseball coach at Limestone College in Columbia, S.C., and he said his pitchers are eager to learn the spitter.

“Everyone wants to learn it,” he said. “I had a kid at my baseball camp who asked me to teach it to him but I said he was too young.”

Asked about his spitball technique, Perry said: “You just wet the tips of your fingers. The ball will rotate completely opposite of what it normally does. It will have a slow spinning motion.”

Perry said pitchers could use an emery board to scuff one side of the ball to make it drop. Other tools for cutting the ball include sandpaper, which also was found in Niekro’s possession, and thumbtacks.

Dodger pitcher Rick Honeycutt, then with the Seattle Mariners, was suspended for using a thumbtack to cut the ball in 1980 in a game against Kansas City.

“It didn’t do anything for me,” Honeycutt said of the ball doctoring. “I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I only did it once and I did it badly and got caught at it.

“I was really struggling at the time. We were in Kansas City and we were getting ready to go out onto the field, and I passed a bulletin board and there was a tack in it. I put it on the middle finger of my glove hand.

“I only tried it twice and it didn’t work. Willie Wilson got a double and George Brett singled.”

How was Honeycutt discovered?

“I had used flesh-colored tape to tape the thumbtack to my glove and Wilson noticed it when he was on second base.”

Perry said that using thumbtacks was, well, tacky. “I never thought of that,” he said. “I don’t think that was very professional. It’s not major league.”

He suggested that one of the simplest ways to cut the ball is to throw it in the dirt.

“Dodger Stadium is one of the best places to scuff a ball because of that red clay they have in the infield,” Perry said. “When the catcher throws it to second base the ball gets scuffed up and a pitcher is dumb not to use it.”

Niekro, a knuckleball pitcher, has long been suspected of scuffing baseballs, and the umpires obviously were watching him carefully Monday.

Honeycutt agreed with Perry that Niekro is getting a raw deal.

“The emery board was in his back pocket,” he said. “How can you scuff a ball if it’s in your back pocket? I played in Texas with Charlie Hough and he always had an emery board with him. The knuckleball (which is gripped with the fingernails) is a tough pitch and you have to keep your nails filed.”

But what about the sandpaper that fell out of Niekro’s pocket?

“If it was in his back pocket, I don’t see how he could have used it,” Honeycutt said. “People have been accused for years of doctoring the ball. Look at Mike Scott (of the Houston Astros). He went from striking out 100 guys to striking out 300 and everyone said he was doctoring the ball last year.”

Drysdale, the former Dodger Hall of Fame pitcher who now broadcasts Chicago White Sox games, also sympathized with Niekro.

“I’ve talked to a lot of knuckleball pitchers and they all use an emery board to keep their nails filed,” Drysdale said. “Niekro wasn’t standing out there filing his nails. As soon as the ball hits the dirt they get scuffed. It doesn’t bother me that much.

“What about hitters using gloves. The balls are jumping out of the park already. Why don’t they just put it on a tee.

“I really don’t understand what they’re trying to get at. There are too many crybabies in the game today. I sympathize with the pitchers. The hitters are lucky to be in the game today.”

Drysdale, too, was suspected of doctoring the ball but he never was caught and has never admitted it. Umpires and hitters figured that Drysdale used hair oil so that he could throw greaseballs.

“No, I didn’t throw a spitter or greaseball,” Drysdale said. “And if I did, I wouldn’t say it.”

Drysdale, who won 209 games for the Dodgers from 1956-69 and had a string of six straight shutouts and 58 scoreless innings in 1968 recalled an umpire conducting a surprise inspection of his hair during a game.

“It was in the middle of my shutout string,” he said. “Augie Donatelli jumped on my back and ran his fingers through my hair. I didn’t see him or else I would have run.

“I said to him, ‘What are you doing? I usually get a kiss when someone runs their fingers through my hair.’

“They never found anything on me.”

Left-hander Frank Tanana of the Detroit Tigers admitted to United Press International, however, that he doctored baseballs when he pitched for the Texas Rangers, but said he stopped after becoming a born-again Christian.

“We did it in Texas,” said Tanana, who regularly refers to himself as we .

“We got to playing with it. We just did it. We don’t do it anymore. What or how long is neither here nor there. Christ and the Lord of my life don’t allow it anymore.”

Tanana would not be specific about what he did to the ball.

Pitchers long have done things, and been suspected of doing things, to baseballs. The spitball, in fact, was a legal pitch until 1920, when it was “abolished.”

Abolished or not, the spitter exploded into a major controversy in the summer of 1973.

First, Perry’s book, “Me and the Spitter” was released.

Then, in August of that year, Jim Merritt of the Rangers was fined an undisclosed amount by the American League after admitting that he had thrown 25-30 “Gaylord fastballs” (spitballs) in a 9-0 win over Perry and the Cleveland Indians.

Several day later, Bill (Spaceman) Lee admitted that he kept a tube of petroleum jelly in his locker and used it to throw greaseballs.

Said Lee: “Hell, if K-Y jelly went off the market, the whole California Angels’ pitching staff would be out of business. Either that or they’d be in Pittsfield. They haven’t gotten fined.”

Spitballs once cost Manager Billy Martin his job.

Martin was fined and later fired by the Tigers in 1973 after revealing that he had ordered two of his pitchers to throw spitballs in a game against Perry and the Indians.

Martin later said that he hadn’t really given that order.

When Martin managed the Oakland A’s in 1982, there were complaints that the entire Oakland pitching staff was using the spitter.

Last season, there were complaints that the Astros’ Scott was scuffing the ball after he went 18-10, struck out 306 and pitched a title-clinching no-hitter en route to winning the Cy Young award.

Scott was evasive when quoted on the subject last season. “I do everything to the ball,” he said sarcastically. “You name it. Just ask the Mets--they’ve been talking about it for a month and a half now. Sandpaper, glue, spitting, Vaseline--I use everything.”

Of the Niekro controversy, Scott told the Associated Press: “When he pitched here, nobody made a big deal about it. Why would he take an emery board out there to scuff a ball with? You might as well take a hacksaw. It would be just as inconspicuous.”