Baseball Hall of Famer and two-time Cy Young Award winner Gaylord Perry, who is known for being a master of the spitball and who wrote a book about perfecting the pitch, passed away Thursday morning. He was 84.
Perry died at his home in Gaffney, South Carolina at about 5 a.m. Thursday of natural causes, Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said. He did not provide any additional details.
“Gaylord Perry was a consistent workhorse and a memorable figure in his Hall of Fame career,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement, adding, “he will be remembered among the most accomplished San Francisco Giants ever … and remained a popular teammate and friend throughout his life.”
The Williamston, North Carolina native, made history as the first player to win the Cy Young in both leagues, with the Cleveland Indians in 1972 and San Diego Padres six years later in 1978, just after turning 40.
Perry went 24-16 in his debut season with Cleveland after a decade with the San Francisco Giants. He was 15 games over .500, 21-6, in his first season with the Padres in 1978 for his fifth and final 20-win season.
“Before I won my second Cy Young I thought I was too old — I didn’t think the writers would vote for me,” Perry said in an article on the National Baseball Hall of Fame website. “But they voted on my performance, so I won it.”
Perry, who took the mound for eight major-league organizations from 1962 until 1983, was a five-time All-Star who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1991. He had a career record of 314-255, finished with 3,534 strikeouts and used a pitching style where he doctored baseballs or made batters believe he was doctoring them.
The Texas Rangers, whom Perry played for on two different occasions, said in a statement Thursday that the pitcher was “a fierce competitor every time he took the ball and more often than not gave the Rangers an opportunity to win the game.”
“The Rangers express their sincere condolences to Gaylord’s family at this difficult time,” the team’s statement said. “This baseball great will be missed.”
Perry’s 1974 autobiography was titled “Me and the Spitter,” and he wrote it in that when he started in 1962, he was the “11th man on an 11-man pitching staff” for the Giants. He needed an edge and learned the spitball from San Francisco teammate Bob Shaw.
Perry said he first threw it in May 1964 against the New York Mets. He pitched 10 innings without surrendering a run and it was not long after that he cracked the Giants’ starting rotation.
He also wrote in the book that he chewed slippery elm bark to build up his saliva, and eventually stopped throwing the pitch in 1968 after MLB ruled pitchers could no longer touch their fingers to their mouths before touching the baseball.
According to his book, he looked into other substances, like petroleum jelly, to doctor the baseball. He used a variety motions and routines to touch different parts of his jersey and body to get hitters thinking he was applying a foreign substance.
Perry was thrown out of a game just once for doctoring a baseball, when he was with the Mariners in August 1982. In his final season with Kansas City, Perry and teammate Leon Roberts tried to hide George Brett’s infamous pine-tar bat in the clubhouse but was stopped by a guard. Perry was ejected for his role in that game, as well.
After he hung up his cleats, Perry founded the baseball program at Limestone College in Gaffney and was its coach for the first three years.
