Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 20, 1994 TAG: 9403200112
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Long
Perry, now 56 and a visitor here Saturday, may or may not have sprayed his way through two leagues on the way to Cy Young awards in each and ultimate sanctuary in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
While the big farm boy from Williamston, N.C., was pitching, he never was entirely forthcoming about the role the spitball and its clandestine cousins the greaseball and the Vaseline ball played in his career.
Occasionally he'd confess. Then he'd take it back and swear he was back traveling the high road of sporting virtue.
Not everybody believed him, of course.
Billy Martin once brought a tracking dog to sniff out the ball bag for evidence against Perry to be presented to the commissioner's office.
No tools of baseball deceit were found. The result?
"The dog died of a heart attack," Martin reportedly said.
Perry used to be irritated to no end when reporters interrogated him on these matters. Even after he retired in 1983, persistent questions about Perry throwing the wet one did not.
On the eve of Perry's induction into the Hall, a columnist in Spartanburg, S.C., near where Perry lives in Inman, intoned that all was not well in the world when a cheater was going to Cooperstown.
Perry didn't think much of that. Nor did he hold in much regard a request from the same paper to conduct an interview with him after his induction into the Hall.
Thus it came as something of a jolt to a questioner who joined Perry and his host, Pulaski insurance man Chuck Shomo, for lunch at Thorn Spring Golf Club when Perry showed neither aversion nor irritation at the mention of mound skullduggery.
"I always used to try to place it in [hitters'] minds that I was putting something on the ball, whether I did or not," said Perry, comfortably prosperous-looking with his string tie and blazer, spacious waist, ice blue eyes and cotton-white hair offset by a tanned dome.
Perry dearly loved to crowbar his way into an opponent's brain with a tube of greasy kid's stuff, whether it be real or imagined.
Maybe a game against the powerhouse Cincinnati Reds was on tap back when Perry pitched for the San Diego Padres. Perry the autobiographer says he used to seek out guys like Pete Rose or Johnny Bench before the game to exchange pleasantries.
The obligatory handshake would leave one of the grossed-out Reds looking as though he'd just dipped his paw into a tub of lard.
Or Perry might notice Sparky Anderson filling out his lineup card in the dugout. Perry says he'd roll - slide? - a doctored ball across the grass to the manager's feet.
Herman Franks was another nervous type Perry took great amusement in unnerving. Perry quietly would stop by Franks' office when the manager wasn't around and plop a baseball that was all but oozing slime on his desk.
Perry wasn't in town at the behest of old pal Shomo - they've known each other since both were in the insurance business - to talk about the shady side of baseball law, though. Perry was there to talk about a more thought-provoking subject - the evils of drug abuse - spin a few yarns and sign a few autographs.
"Always sign the autographs first," said Perry, pen in fist, in his best stage whisper. "Never tell them you'll do it later."
And there he was, in the dim lights of a gym at the Pulaski YMCA, shooting some hoops, posing for some snapshots and signing cards and baseballs for a modest assembly of children and more mature thrill-seekers.
Perry clearly has become adept at this sort of thing. Like many of his retired baseball brethren, he keeps the greenbacks flowing with appearances at card shows, old-timers' games and the like.
"The first card show I went to, I made more money than I did in my first year in the big leagues," he said. "It's been the second-best job I ever had."
The road also beckons his elegantly understated Jaguar sedan to take him to various company get-togethers and golf tournaments, so as to press the flesh with the big shots of commerce.
Perry owns a 175-acre ranch outside Gaffney, S.C., but the spread is relatively quiet these days because he's divested himself of most of his herd of cattle.
"Can't find any good part-time cowboys," he said.
Most of the bookkeeping for his sundry enterprises is handled by friend and traveling companion Deborah Cummings, who was working for the athletic director at little Limestone (S.C.) College when Perry arrived there to start a baseball program after his playing days were through.
"I didn't know anything about baseball," she said. "I didn't even know who Gaylord Perry was. I had to go to the library and look him up."
Historians are and probably always will be divided on Perry's contributions to the art of pitching, his 300-plus victories and 3,000-plus strikeouts notwithstanding.
Perhaps George Bamberger, a confessed spitballer himself, put it best when he once was quoted on the matter:
"We do not play baseball. We play professional baseball. Amateurs play games. We are paid to win games. . . . A guy who cheats in a friendly game of cards is a `cheater.' A pro who throws a spitball to support his family is a `competitor.' "
by CNB