Nowadays Gaylord Perry’s pitching career is probably remembered most for his rubber arm and for what he did (or, at least, was perceived to have done) to baseballs before he threw them.

But don’t overlook the immense quality of that career. Perry, who died Thursday at age 84, was voted to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for plenty of reasons, not the least of which was his two Cy Young Awards and 314 career victories. Viewed through a more contemporary lens, Perry was a 90-win pitcher via Baseball Reference’s version of wins above replacement (WAR) -- a distinction that only six other American or National League pitchers who debuted after baseball’s integration in 1947 can claim.

The more one looks across Perry’s stacked 22-year career, the more they begin to appreciate his standing in history. Here are facts you should know about Perry’s on-field legacy, as we remember the life of a baseball great:

• Perry was the first pitcher to win at least one Cy Young Award in each league, claiming his first with Cleveland in 1972 and another with the NL’s Padres in ‘78. Only five other pitchers have repeated that feat since Perry, and it’s a very impressive list: Roger Clemens (Red Sox and Blue Jays in the AL; Astros in NL), Roy Halladay (Blue Jays, Phillies), Randy Johnson (Mariners, D-backs), Pedro Martinez (Expos, Red Sox) and Max Scherzer (Tigers, Nationals).

• After 10 years with the Giants, Perry was traded to Cleveland before the 1972 season -- a trade that shocked him but also clearly served as motivation. He responded by making 40 starts, completing 29 of them and putting up a staggering 342 2/3 innings for his new club. Even with all that work, Perry finished with a sparkling 1.92 ERA and a league-leading 24 wins to earn that first career Cy Young Award.

Here’s something you might not know about that ‘72 season: Perry earned a decision -- whether it be a win, loss or save -- in each and every one of his 41 appearances that summer. He picked up that save after coming out of the bullpen on one day’s rest to close out a 16-inning game on April 30. Then, he returned to the mound just two days later and struck out 12 batters in a 7 2/3-inning win against Texas.

• The second of Perry’s Cy Young Awards came during a summer in which he celebrated his 40th birthday. That made him the oldest Cy Young winner, a title he held for decades until 42-year-old Roger Clemens won his seventh and final Cy in 2004. 

Perry twirled a 2.73 ERA across 260 2/3 innings in 1978, earning a league-leading 21 wins for a Padres team he’d just been traded to the winter before. Yes, that’s right -- Perry won each of his two Cys in seasons immediately following a trade to a new team.

“Before I won my second Cy Young I thought I was too old,” he later told the National Baseball Hall of Fame, “I didn’t think the writers would vote for me.” When he learned he had won after the 1978 campaign, Perry told the Associated Press, “[The press] kept saying, “You’re too old to do this and that,’ but I think I showed them.” 

Indeed, he did.

• Those 21 wins for the Padres marked the third different team for which Perry won at least 20 games in a season. Per the Elias Sports Bureau, he sits alongside Grover Cleveland Alexander, Roger Clemens, Claude Hendrix, Carl Mays, Joe McGinnity, Jack Powell and Cy Young as Modern-Era (since 1900) AL/NL pitchers with 20-win seasons in three different uniforms.

• Perry finished his career having pitched an astounding 5,350 innings, still the sixth-highest total in AL/NL history and the fourth-most of any AL/NL pitcher who began his career in the 20th century, behind only Walter Johnson, Phil Niekro and Nolan Ryan. That total included six different 300-inning seasons for Perry, tied with Robin Roberts for the most of any pitcher in the Live Ball Era (beginning in 1920).

Perry averaged 315 innings per season between 1967-75, and his 2,832 1/3 innings during that span alone (which only represents roughly one-third of his career) constituted more than the entire career innings totals for several Hall of Fame starters including Pedro Martinez, Roy Halladay, Sandy Koufax and Dizzy Dean.

And Perry’s ERA across all that work from 1967-75? A sterling 2.73 -- 30% better than the AL/NL average per the league-adjusted ERA+ metric.

• Perry is one of only 24 pitchers in the 300-win club, finishing his 22-year career with 314 big league victories. His older brother, Jim, knew how to win, too; he finished with 215 victories. Together, the Perry brothers trail only Phil and Joe Niekro (539 combined wins) on the AL/NL all-time siblings victory list. The Perrys are also the only pair of brothers to each win a Cy Young Award, with Jim claiming one with the Twins in 1970.

• The greatest sibling combos in MLB history

Gaylord and Jim Perry pitched one full season together on the same squad, and they left quite the family impression: the Perry boys accounted for 38 of Cleveland’s 77 total wins in 1974 -- an incredible 49% share.

• Perry chose an incredible night to twirl his one and only no-hitter, authoring it against Bob Gibson at the absolute peak of his powers on Sept. 17, 1968. Perry’s two-walk, nine-strikeout no-no bested Gibson in a 1-0 ballgame, during a season in which the Cardinals’ ace completed 28 of his 34 starts, put up 13 shutouts and finished with an AL/NL Live Ball Era record 1.12 ERA. Gibson’s dominance during the “Year of the Pitcher” persuaded MLB to lower the pitcher’s mound. But, for one night that summer, Perry was even better.

• Perry sat third on the AL/NL all-time strikeout list when he retired after the 1983 season, and he still ranks eighth now with 3,534 punchouts. He got there more via remarkable consistency than epic heights. Perry’s 14 different seasons with at least 150 strikeouts is tied for the fifth-most AL/NL in history, but he, Greg Maddux and Don Sutton are the only pitchers in the 3,000 strikeout club without a single 250-punchout campaign. In fact, Perry never won a single-season league strikeout crown.

• Perry had a well-known reputation for doctoring baseballs and possibly throwing the outlawed spitball pitch, but whether he actually did or not, the threat of such hijinks seemed to affect hitters as much as any actual physical evidence. Longtime AL umpire Bill Haller said, “I watched Gaylord like a hawk. I’ve never found anything. I’ll tell you what he’s got: a good curve, a fine fastball, a good change, and a fine sinker. I’ll tell you what Perry is: He’s one helluva pitcher, and a fine competitor.”

Perry seized upon suspicions and played with hitters’ minds. He released his autobiography, “Me and the Spitter” -- in which he detailed how he altered balls -- in the middle of his playing career and constantly fidgeted with parts of his uniform on the mound. But it took all the way until Perry’s 21st season before he was finally ejected for doctoring a pitch.

According to Perry’s own book, he tried the spitball for the first time in game action during a 1964 Giants-Mets game that lasted 23 innings across seven hours and 23 minutes. Perry came on in mop-up duty and earned the win with 10 shutout innings, a turning point that gained him manager Al Dark’s confidence and earned him more playing time. 

• A total of eight teams enjoyed Perry’s services, making him one of only eight Hall of Famers that played with at least eight different franchises in their Major League careers. Half of the franchises Perry wound up playing for -- the Rangers, Padres, Mariners and Royals -- didn’t exist when he signed with the Giants in 1958.

• There was a chance that fans would have never seen Perry pitch, because he was also a dominant high school basketball player. Perry averaged nearly 30 points and 20 rebounds per game while leading North Carolina’s Williamston High to a 94-8 record across his four years. But Perry turned down dozens of college basketball scholarships and instead signed a three-year contract with the Giants that included a $60,000 bonus.