On this day in Sports Legends... August 23, 1982: Seattle Mariners pitcher Gaylord Perry is ejected for throwing a spitter. Perry was starting for the Mariners against the Boston Red Sox and two things were known about Perry: 1) he’d long been known as a spitball pitcher; and 2) he’d never been caught red-handed. For much of the day, things went as usual. Perry generally got guys out, but trailed 1-0 in the top of the seventh. Then the umpires finally caught him after Boston demanded Perry be investigated for throwing the spitter, and sure enough the umpires found Perry holding a ball covered in Vaseline. After 5,128.2 inning pitched and 20,993 batters faced, Gaylord Perry was caught for throwing the spitball and he left the game without protest. It really wasn’t a question of if Perry threw it. His willingness to throw it was widely known and Perry practically waged a national PR campaign to let people know he did it. When he co-wrote his autobiography, he titled it Me and the Spitter. For Perry, the spitter was a two-fold weapon. First, it was an effective pitch that would move weirdly away from batters. Second, the threat of the spitball was a psychological weapon he could use against batters. He’d do a little routine on the mound where he’d touch his cap brim, or his eyebrows or whatever else—it was all designed to make the batter wonder if he was loading up on the ball. Thus Perry could throw a perfectly clean pitch because the spitter was always a threat and it made batters wonder what was coming. This was the first ejection for loading up on the ball since the 1940s. Perry was voted #3 in an ESPN fan poll of the Top-10 Biggest Cheaters in Baseball.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 10:00:00 +0000
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