SPITTIN’ IMAGE : If Gaylord Perry Was All Wet, Why the Cy Youngs?

It seems safe to say that Gaylord Perry threw an occasional spitter when he was mesmerizing rival batters, but so what?

Those who dwell on the question of whether Perry moistened the baseball ignore the fact that he was a pitcher who someday might be in the Hall of Fame. Also, he was never caught with an illegal substance.

Spitter or no spitter, Perry won 314 games in 22 years with eight clubs in the major leagues, and he had one of his greatest seasons with the Padres in 1978. At the age of 40, he became the only pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues.

Six years earlier, when he was with the Cleveland Indians, Perry earned the award in the American League. He did it with a career-high 24 victories--against 16 defeats--and a career-low earned-run average of 1.92.

With the Padres, in his first of two seasons here after coming over from the Texas Rangers, Perry did a rerun in the National League with a won-lost record of 21-6 and an ERA of 2.72.

Perry never again won more than 12 games in a season--he was 12-11 with the Padres in 1979--before finally retiring at the age of 45. But in that one last big year, he was dazzling.

He pitched all season on just three days’ rest, which almost nobody does today, but got stronger as he went along. He finished with a six-game winning streak and topped off the season by joining the 3,000-strikeout club on the last day. He was only the third pitcher to reach that milestone, following Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson, and when he got there, the fans cheered until he made a curtain call.

Now 50--he will turn 51 on Sept. 15--Perry is the baseball coach at Limestone College in Gaffney, S.C. One of his players is his son, Jack, a 6-foot-8 left-hander with a dream of following in his father’s footsteps.

Perry looked back to his second Cy Young season after the recent Equitable Old-Timers game in Anaheim.

“It was like the first one in a way,” he said. “In ‘72, I had just been traded from San Francisco to Cleveland. In ‘78, I had just been traded from Texas to San Diego.

“But it was really a great experience in San Diego. The fact that I was still able to pitch that well when I was 40 was very satisfying. Probably the greatest thing I had going for me was having Rollie Fingers in the bullpen. I think he saved 14 or 15 of my 21 wins.”

Fingers, who lives in El Cajon, actually earned only 10 of his league-leading 37 saves on behalf of Perry. John D’Aquisto saved three, Bob Shirley and Mickey Lolich one each.

Fingers also finished an 11th game for Perry, but didn’t get a save in that one.

Note, then, that Perry pitched only five complete games in 37 starts. In his other Cy Young season, he completed a career-high 29 of 40 starts.

But times changed in the interim. By 1978, relief specialists were being relied on to the extent that managers sent for them at the first sign of trouble in the late innings.

As Perry put it during that season, “It’s hard for our starters to pitch complete games, because we have such a good bullpen.”

Two of Perry’s five complete games were shutouts. Three of his six defeats were by scores of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2. In five of the six consecutive victories with which he ended the season, he gave up just six runs.

“I really had a big September,” he said. “I always had a good September. I wound it up the right way, and that put me up front in the (Cy Young) voting. I figured if I had a good September, I had a good chance to win it. There was nobody right behind me to sneak up on me.”

Perry had pitched a no-hit game for San Francisco in 1968, but another Cy Young Award was more appealing to him.

“Winning a second Cy Young,” he said after the 1978 finale, “would mean even more to me than my no-hitter.”

As it turned out, he won in a landslide. He received 22 of 24 first-place votes from a panel of sportswriters, the two others going to Burt Hooton of the Dodgers. He totaled 116 points to Hooton’s 38.

Perry was the oldest winner and when he got the good news, he said, “I’m dedicating this to all the people 40 or over. It was exciting when I won the first time, but this has more power and pleasure in it. This time I was 40, and it was the first time the Padres had played .500 ball or better (84-78).”

Asked if he had used his much-publicized spitter, Perry dodged the issue by saying, “I kept the slippery pitch ready all season, thinking they would probably legalize it sooner or later.”

Perry added, “I hope I’ll be part of the San Diego franchise for a long time.”

But he was gone less than a year later. He abruptly left the Padres on Sept. 5, 1979, drew a suspension for the remainder of the season and subsequently was traded back to the Rangers.

Asked in Anaheim why he had jumped the club, Perry said, “I went home.”

Asked to elaborate, he said, “For personal reasons.”

At the beginning of September, Perry had been told by Manager Roger Craig, now manager of the Giants, that the Padres wanted to start rookies called up from the minor leagues in the final month. Perry didn’t relish sitting and watching, so he packed up and left.

Tim Flannery, the Padres’ veteran utility infielder, recalled that he reached San Diego just as Perry was departing.

“The last game he pitched was my first game,” Flannery said. “I was just up from the minors, and I played second base. To me, it was an honor to play behind such a great pitcher.

“The guys said at that time that if you made an error behind him, he would turn around and scream at you. Fortunately, I had just one fielding chance, a popup for the last out, and I’m sure he had something to do with that. Ozzie Smith was our shortstop, and Perry had such great control that he made practically everybody hit to the left side.

“After that, he left to work on his peanut farm.”

Smith, now with St. Louis, confirmed Flannery’s testimony about Perry’s impeccable control. Smith was a rookie, just a year out of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, when Perry won his second Cy Young award.

“Perry had the uncanny ability of getting them to hit the ball to me,” Smith said. “He would turn around to me and motion to go into the hole because he was going to pitch a guy a different way from what our scouting report said.

“He was just phenomenal. The man was a master tactician. He was like a surgeon. He definitely helped my career. He knew how to utilize his infielders to the best of their ability, and that allowed me to utilize what had gotten me here.”

Padre broadcaster Jerry Coleman said of Perry, “He was the only pitcher who could be behind a hitter three-oh and actually be ahead in the count. He’d throw a fastball down the middle, and it would be three-one. On the next one, the guy would be looking for another fastball, and he’d get a curve that made it three-two. Now it was one on one, and Perry would throw one of his other pitches and the hitter was gone.”

Coleman added that as fine a pitcher as Perry was, he was never fully appreciated.

“He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,” Coleman said. “He was one of the great pitchers of our generation. He was smart, and that’s better than good. Smart people find a way to win. Good people find a way to lose.

“But he was not a lovable person, so I don’t think he was a fan favorite. He didn’t have charisma.”

Dave Nelson, a Chicago Cubs broadcaster, recalled Perry as first a rival and then a teammate in the American League.

“Gaylord was one of the fiercest competitors I ever played with or against,” Nelson said. “One time I bunted on him and stole a base, so the next time he threw at my head and hit me in the elbow. I went to first base and stole second again, and he stared at me.

“The next year, he was with me in Texas. I said, ‘Welcome aboard,’ and he said to me, ‘I’ve got to give you credit. You’re a spunky little guy.’

“It wasn’t that I didn’t like the guy. I just didn’t like what he did.”

Andre Dawson of the Cubs, who played against Perry the Padre as a member of the Montreal Expos, recalled that he had more trouble with Perry’s breaking pitches--his legitimate ones--than anything else.

“He threw me a lot of off-speed stuff,” Dawson said. “He got ahead of you and made you hit his pitch. I guess he only threw in the low 80s, but he spotted his fastball very cleverly, and he complemented it with his off-speed pitches. He kept me off balance most of the time.”

Perry’s pitching repertoire included just about everything: a fastball, a hard slider, a forkball, a changeup, curves thrown at different speeds. Then there was the spitter, alleged or otherwise, which over the years came to be known as a greaseball.

One instance in which he was punished still did not prove conclusively that he was throwing spitters. He was suspended for 10 days and fined $250 in August 1982 after umpire Dave Phillips ruled that he had doctored baseballs he threw against Boston while with the Seattle Mariners. American League President Lee MacPhail upheld the suspension, but no foreign substance was found.

And so the question remained: Did he or didn’t he? Remarks by Padre broadcaster Rick Monday, who played against Perry as an outfielder with the Dodgers, seem typical.

“There was no controversy,” Monday said. “He threw a spitter. I know exactly how he did it: very well. He didn’t throw me many, because a spitter breaks down, and I was a low-ball hitter, but he didn’t have to.

“All he had to do was put doubt in the hitters’ minds. He seemed to take great delight in watching people’s reactions to whether he might or might not be altering the baseball.”

A sampling of other comments:

Garry Templeton, who played against Perry as a Cardinal before being traded to the Padres for Smith: “I know he wetted it up, because he threw some pitches that did weird stuff. If he was in a critical situation, you knew you were going to get the wet one. It would knuckle up there and fall down. He used it at least twice in every at-bat, and he knew he could get you out with it. But I’ll say this: He was the best I’ve ever seen at disguising it.”

Nelson: “Lord knows where he got the wet stuff from, but he was an expert at loading up. He would get it off his hair, his neck, wherever. In his later years, he went to it more and more often. It got to the point where he messed up everybody’s minds.”

Coleman: “He spotted the spitter very cleverly. He loved to tease hitters with it, and he used it as a psychological ploy. It was the specter of it that really made the difference.”

Tom Lasorda, Dodger manager: “Everybody knew he was throwing it, but he was too slick for anybody to catch him. I think his other talents were diminished in people’s minds by all the talk about his spitter.”

Two other managers, Jack McKeon of the Padres and Don Zimmer of the Cubs, said they played down the subject to their players when their clubs faced Perry.

Said McKeon: “I told my players (in Kansas City), ‘If you start going up there looking for that stuff, you’ll get yourself out.’ ”

And Zimmer: “Why bother? They don’t do nothing about it anyway.”

Coleman, Monday and Templeton called attention to the fact that, on occasion, Perry also threw what could best be described as a puff ball.

“It was a pitch you don’t hear much about,” Monday said. “He would hold the resin bag in his hand for what seemed like forever, and when he threw the ball, you’d see what looked like a big puff of smoke.”

But the spitter was Perry’s trademark, and he traded on his reputation to the fullest.

“I kept them guessing every chance I got,” he said. “I made them believe I threw a spitter. Making them think I did was a big advantage to me.”