SEATTLE — Gaylord Perry used to call the spitball "my survival pitch," and by the time he got to Seattle in 1982 — barely hanging on at 43 years old, 21 years into his career — survival was his preeminent goal.
Perry was three wins shy of 300, the magic number he knew was needed to reach the Hall of Fame, considering the specter of ball-doctoring that surrounded him. The Braves had released Perry the previous year, and no one but the Mariners, eager for the attendance boost Perry would give them, were willing to give him a contract in '82 — and a month to month one at that. At the end of each month the M's would decide if they still wanted him around.
Well, not only did he last that season and into the next, but Perry's time in Seattle turned out to be one of the most memorable stints in the brief history of the expansion franchise, which had just five seasons — miserable ones, all — under its belt.
Perry, who died Thursday at age 84 at his home in Gaffney, S.C., won 10 games in 1982, including No. 300 against the Yankees on May 6 at the Kingdome. He helped the Mariners stay in unexpected contention until August en route to a 76-86 record, their best at that point. Perry would say often in retirement that Seattle manager Rene Lachemann — six years younger than him at 37 — was among the favorites he ever played for. And the admiration was mutual.
"He was the biggest and best competitor I've ever been associated with," Lachemann, now 77, said Thursday from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. "I've been with a lot of good ones, but this guy was one of the top, if not the top, as far as going out and wanting to perform and win games. This was late in his career, and he knew he had to go ahead and do certain things to win ballgames."
Everyone knew, or thought they did, what those "certain things" were. This is the guy, after all, who entitled his autobiography, "Me and the Spitter." In that book he wrote that he learned the spitball from Giants teammate Bob Shaw in 1964 and graduated to "the mud ball, the emery ball, the K-Y ball, just to name a few. During the next eight years or so, I reckon I tried everything on the old apple but salt and pepper and chocolate sauce toppin'."
I asked Lachemann if Perry really doctored the ball when he was with Seattle or if it was all just a show.
"No, he used it — but everybody else was using it, too, so what the hell is the difference?" he said. "Guys were cutting balls and stuff like that, scuffing and altering balls."
Noted author Pete Axthelm wrote in Newsweek after Perry's 300th win, "Slathered in grease and heat rub, he smells like a ransacked pharmacy."
As much as Perry played along with the ongoing suspicions — he would go through exaggerated gyrations and touches before every pitch to put the thought in hitters' heads that he was loading up the ball — he bristled at the notion that his career success was predicated on the spitball. Perry wound up winning 314 games, threw 303 complete games (eight of those with the Mariners), was eighth all-time with 3,534 strikeouts and was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues. He was elected to the Hall of Fame — on his third try — in 1991.
"I think if they look at the records, what I did, you can't do it all on one pitch no matter how good you are," he once said.
That quote came during an interview I did with Perry at a downtown Seattle hotel in 2012 when he was in town to throw out the first pitch at Safeco Field as part of the team's 35th anniversary celebration. He talked about the happy memories he had playing for the Mariners as well as his time with Tacoma from 1960-63 when it was a Giants farm team.
"It's a very special place to me," he said. "Making the Hall of Fame, it would have been very hard without those extra few wins."
The last out of his 300th win was on a ground ball from Willie Randolph to Mariners second baseman Julio Cruz. Cruz, who died this year, famously made four or five steps toward first base before throwing the ball and quipped after the game, "I was trying to find the dry side to make a throw. Gaylord had so much Vaseline on the ball it was almost impossible."
Lachemann and longtime Mariners public relations executive Randy Adamack remembered that Perry could be grumpy at times and was known to be hard on teammates he didn't feel were holding up their end.
"But he loved guys that could just do their jobs," Adamack said.
Perry also wasn't above a little side hustle. Adamack has heard speculation that he used a different uniform in each inning of his 300th win so he could sell them to collectors.
"A lot of different people think they have the jerseys from the game," Adamack said.
Another notable event in Perry's career occurred with the Mariners at the Kingdome on Aug. 23, 1982. That's when he was ejected for doctoring the baseball for the first and only time in his 22-year career, despite constant vigilance from umpires and opposing players. It was crew chief Dave Phillips who did the honors, resulting in a 10-game suspension and $250 fine that Lachemann said the club wound up paying. Here's how Perry related the story to me in 2012:
"The umpire came out in the fifth inning and said he found something on the ball. I said, 'I ain't putting anything on the ball.' The rule is, if the ball does something funny, he's going to look at it. I was throwing a lot of forkballs, curveballs, not many fastballs. We were playing the Red Sox, a great fastball-hitting club, so why throw them fastballs? Rene Lachemann, a great guy, came out and said, 'Jesus Christ, put something on the ball.' I said, no problem. Next thing you know, I'm out of there.
"Later Lach told me he meant throw the ball hard. He didn't explain himself. As I went to the dugout after I was tossed, Lach said, 'I didn't mean that.' "
Lachemann on Thursday more or less corroborated that story, with a few little details changed that aren't really important anymore, 40 years after the fact. And the pain of their departures from Seattle — Lachemann fired and Perry and starting shortstop Todd Cruz released on the same day, June 24, 1983, dubbed "The King Street Massacre" — has dissipated over time as well.
What lives on is the crowning achievement of a baseball legend that happened in Seattle with the Mariners, a team that didn't yet have much history attached to it. After his 300th win — a complete game — Perry told reporters, "Maybe you guys will recognize me now for winning 300 and not for that other pitch."
Yes, and no. Perry is certainly recognized as one of the most successful pitchers in baseball history. But his name will always be synonymous with his "survival pitch," the spitter.
