The 2005 World Series

Rollie Fingers

He was a sleight-of-hand magician, an illusionist who misdirected the concentration of batters, managers and umpires. Gaylord Perry not only loaded up pitches with foreign substances banned by baseball rules, he loaded up the thoughts of opponents with distracting mind games. He was a 314-game winner who won as much with guile and intelligence as with a strong arm.

After Perry's 1983 retirement, he traced the origin of his notorious spitball to 1964, his third big-league season with the San Francisco Giants. Throughout the remainder of a 22-year career that featured stops in eight cities, he was cursed by hitters, screamed at by managers and undressed by umpires futilely searching for evidence. The laconic, broad-shouldered Perry simply displayed his good-old-boy smile and endured the flareups, knowing the distractions were only giving him a huge psychological edge.

Before every pitch, Perry would touch various parts of his anatomy--behind the ear, his forehead, his hair, the bill of his cap, his pants leg, his wrist -- as hitters waited for the inevitable spitter, a pitch that would approach the plate like a fastball and drop abruptly. Their fear of the spitter only made Perry's above-average fastball and slider more effective and helped him top 20 wins five times and record six 300-inning seasons in an amazingly durable career that ended in Kansas City.

Perry won the first of two Cy Young Awards in 1972 when he recorded a 24-16 record with 29 complete games and a 1.92 ERA for the Cleveland Indians. The second came after a 21-6 record in 1978 for San Diego. But the five-time All-Star's only postseason fling came in 1971 when he was 1-1 in the Giants' National League Championship Series loss to Pittsburgh.