Gaylord Jackson Perry (September 15, 1938 – December 1, 2022) was a professional baseball player in the United States.
From 1962 to 1983, he was a right-handed pitcher for eight different teams in Major League Baseball.
Perry had a 22-year baseball career with 314 wins, 3,534 strikeouts, and a 3.11 earned run average. In 1991, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Perry, a five-time All-Star, was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues, winning the American League in 1972 with the Cleveland Indians and the National League in 1978 with the San Diego Padres; his Cy Young Award announcement came just as he turned 40, making him the oldest pitcher to win the award, a record that stood for 26 years.
He is also notable for being a member of the second-winningest brother combination in baseball history, trailing only the knuckleball-throwing brothers Phil Niekro and Joe Niekro. Perry reached the 300-win plateau while pitching for the Seattle Mariners in 1982.
Perry went so far as to call his 1974 autobiography Me and the Spitter, but despite his reputation for altering baseballs (e.g., throwing spitballs) and perhaps even more so for tricking batters into thinking he was throwing them frequently, he was not ejected for the unlawful practice until August 23, 1982, in his 21st season in the majors.
Blanche Manning Perry cause of death: What happened to Gaylord Perry’s wife?
Blanche Manning Perry, Perry’s wife, died on September 11, 1987, when a car ran a stop sign and hit her car broadside on U.S. Route 27 in Lake Wales, Florida.
Perry and Blanche had three daughters and one son. On June 18, 2005, their son, Jack, died from leukemia. Perry founded the Limestone College Baseball Program in Gaffney, South Carolina, in 1988, with his son Jack as a founding member.
Jack was a talented pitcher who was inducted into the Limestone College Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.
Jack pitched three seasons at Limestone College under his father’s tutelage, and he is the only player in team history to throw a no-hitter, doing so twice in two weeks during the 1990 season. Chris, Perry’s nephew, is a PGA Tour professional golfer.
