How Dry I Am

Can Gaylord Perry make it without grease? Everyone in baseball was asking that question about the Cleveland righthander this spring. The prospects did not look good. For ten years Perry had baffled National and American League hitters with the best spitball, or slickest greaseball, in the game. Working his way up from simple saliva to sea moss, baby oil, hair tonic, slippery elm slop, Vaseline and finally vaginal jelly, Perry had loaded up the ball well enough to win 183 games, earn $100,000 a year, and be selected as the best pitcher in the A.L. in 1972. Then last winter, officials decided to bounce the illegal but nevertheless popular pitch by giving umpires the right to eject anyone they suspect of using it.

Perry was prepared. He had perfected a dancing but parched-dry forkball. Or so he said. After being warned about suspicious pitches early in the season, he arranged a special demonstration for senior umpires to prove that his "great stuff' was greaseless. What the umps saw, or thought they saw, was a delivery with the first and second ringers gripping the sides rather than the top of the ball. "They agreed it was not a spitter," Perry reported. "One umpire even complimented me." Since then, Forkballer Perry has been the toughest pitcher in baseball, winning thirteen consecutive games while compiling a miserly ERA of 1.22. Boasts Perry: "I don't need the spitter any more."

Others are not so sure. After striking out against Perry four times last week, Chicago White Sox Star Dick Allen declared, "He's still got it. I don't think he can win big without it." Billy Martin, the Texas Rangers' feisty manager, says, "I don't know anything about Perry's forkball, but he still throws a spitter." In a book about his experiences with the spitter, Perry himself concedes that when he greases the ball just right, it "looks like a forkball." His techniques are so refined by now, though, that it is doubtful anyone could tell for sure. He certainly will not face the kind of complaint that he received from former San Francisco Giant Catcher Tom Haller when Perry was first learning how to wet the ball. "Gay, please cut down on the load," Haller pleaded in the middle of one game. "I'm getting drenched."

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