Spitter

David Vaught's comprehensive biography of notorious spitball pitcher and Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry documents not only the highs and lows of Perry's baseball career but also the ways in which Perry was shaped by his upbringing in eastern North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s. Vaught masterfully mines Perry's own memoir (Me and the Spitter) as well as hundreds of newspaper articles and some key interviews to draw a well-rounded portrait of a complicated, difficult figure.In order to contextualize and fill in the gaps in Perry's story, Vaught ably reconstructs the Perry family's history, their near-constant financial insecurities, and their discomfort with civil rights. These foundational circumstances foreshadowed Perry's struggles with his own finances (despite large contracts at the height of his career) and his conflicts with Cleveland Indians manager Frank Robinson. Vaught interweaves the historical details of race relations and white supremacy in Williamston and Farmlife, North Carolina, with a treatment of the widespread discrimination faced by Black and Brown Major League Baseball players in the 1960s and 1970s. Here, too, Vaught's immersion in the extant literature proves helpful—he is able to assess pivotal moments in Perry's career from the point of view of teammates and opponents who published autobiographies that covered the same incidents. Given Perry's well-documented anger issues, Vaught's dedication to employing multiple sources ensures that the reader is getting more of the story than that provided by Perry alone. Perry himself participated in but one early interview for this book project.The portrait of Perry that emerges in Vaught's telling is that of a talented, often selfish, highly competitive, and volatile pitcher. He spent time with many teams over the course of his career but rarely exhibited the qualities expected of a good teammate. He was a star pitcher during the early days of Marvin Miller's leadership of the newly formed Major League Baseball Players Association, serving as a union representative for the San Francisco Giants even when he disapproved of the union's existence. He socialized with numerous Black teammates but could not accept the authority of a Black manager and opposed the civil rights movement (supporting Ronald Reagan both as governor of California and president as well as Jesse Helms as North Carolina senator). He was quick to criticize and blame teammates for errors and a lack of run support but did not publicly accept responsibility for his own bad outings. Increasingly, as his career wound down, Perry seemed intent only on his individual statistics—obsessed with surpassing 300 wins and Walter Johnson's record of 3,508 strikeouts. Even after his retirement and subsequent election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Perry continued to rail against the financial and popular success of his contemporaries, whom he viewed as inferior players.There are a few weaknesses in Vaught's otherwise excellent biography. While Vaught supplies a selected bibliography and substantial endnotes, the reference list does not include interviews. Perry's daughter, for instance, is listed as Elizabeth Long, with no indication of her familial relationship. Academic readers may find this lack of clarity frustrating as they examine the endnotes to better understand Vaught's sourcing.Vaught's epilogue is a passionately argued but flawed attempt to connect Perry's rule-breaking spitball with the performance enhancing drug (PED) scandals of the last few decades. Vaught juxtaposes media coverage and quotes from players of both eras in order to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the two, ultimately arguing that Perry's skirting of the rules was less problematic than Jose Canseco's use of PEDs given that Perry's contemporaries considered his performance worthy of praise and that a greaseball is not a violation of federal legislation. However, this five-page discussion is unable to sufficiently delve into the complexities of PED use in Major League Baseball. Moreover, Vaught notably ignores the allegations of amphetamine (greenie) use by many of Perry's teammates and opponents, as well as the scandal surrounding Pete Rose's gambling. While it is understandable that Vaught wants to contrast Perry's use of the spitball with the more recent PED controversy, ignoring the other scandals and cheating allegations of Perry's era is a missed opportunity. In the end, this epilogue reads as an underdeveloped defense of Perry's place in the Hall of Fame and an excuse to attack former players for engaging in cheating that Vaught deems to be more egregious than throwing a charming spitball.Overall, Spitter is a valuable addition to the history of Major League Baseball in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Vaught's attention to the historical, cultural, and political context of Perry's life and career elevate this biography and make it a useful text for sport historians and baseball enthusiasts looking for a critical assessment of Perry's career as well as the pivotal moment in baseball history in which he played

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