OT: RIP Gaylord Perry

[RiverDog]

I realize that this is a football forum, and a Seahawks football forum at that, but I felt it appropriate to honor a former Seattle Mariner (among seven other MLB teams) and HOF pitcher Gaylord Perry, who passed away yesterday at the age of 84.

There's an urban legend that's been circulating for several decades about Perry that has a number of varying accounts that may or may not be true:

In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gaylo ... -home-run/

Perry was quite a character, made light of his other 'urban legend', the spit ball. RIP.

[c_hawkbob]

Wow, that name's a blast from the past! And yeah, the way I remember it they'd always say he'd scuff the ball, spit on it, maybe a little dab of Brylcream, anything to get some action on the ball. Quite the character too. RIP.

[Old but Slow]

He was the kind of character that makes baseball so interesting. And he made it more fun. RIP.

[RiverDog]

The first MLB game I saw was when I was 10 years old, in July of 1965. My mother and aunt had taken us to the SF area to visit with my uncle and took us to a SF Giants game one afternoon. I actually found the box score as I could remember who the starting pitcher was for the Giants: Warren Spahn, and that Pete Rose of the Reds had hit a home run off him in the first inning.

In any event, in that random game in which Gaylord Perry pitched, I counted 6 future Hall of Famers that we saw in that random game: Warren Spahn, Gaylord Perry, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Frank Robinson, and Tony Perez. That doesn't count Pete Rose, who was banned for life and is not in the HOF, and it doesn't count HOF'er Juan Marichal, who was on the Giants roster but didn't pitch that day, nor does it include Vada Pinson, who has more hits than any other retired player not in the HOF or suspected of PED's.

Sorry for going off topic. Perry was one of the most interesting characters in sports during his time.

[govandals]

I vividly remember watching Gaylord Perry on WTBS for the Braves around 1980/81. I was excited when he came to the Mariners. We didn't get M's games on TV back then, but I read the box scores in the paper every morning. I remember saving a copy of the local paper when he won 300 games, of course it's long gone now.