New York ? Gaylord Perry was on the phone, cheerfully returning one of the 20 reporters’ calls he received this week in the wake of Sammy Sosa’s corking incident.

“Tell Lach (Mariner coach Rene Lachemann) I said hello,” Perry drawled from his home in Spruce Pine, N.C. “Man, I loved playing for him.”

When the subject is cheating, you go to the master. Though Perry, now 64, has never acknowledged loading up the baseball with foreign substances, the title of his autobiography — “Me and the Spitter” — says it all.

Baseball culture, for some reasons, makes a clear distinction between the indiscretions of pitchers and hitters. As baseball author Rob Neyer astutely noted, “When pitchers cheat, it’s ‘colorful.’ When hitters cheat, it’s cheating.”

Perry, the colorful Hall of Famer, is sure to become Exhibit A for Sosa, living proof that cheaters can still have a place in Cooperstown.

“He should have been a better carpenter,” said Perry. “It just goes to show you that everyone wants an edge.”

For Perry, it became all about the edge — getting into the heads of hitters and opposing managers the obsessive thought that he might be loading up the baseball, even if he wasn’t. That mental edge — and some great stuff, a regrettably forgotten element of his success — helped Perry win 314 games.

He thinks that Sammy can mess with pitchers’ heads now that they’ll be thinking cork. But that’s a treacherous path to walk, Perry acknowledged.

“Every pitcher who gives up a home run to him now is going to wonder — gee, he must have had that bat corked,” he said. “It’s going to stay with Sammy the rest of his career, and he’s going to have to live with it.”

Perry was able to turn that scrutiny into a virtual lounge act on the mound, going through exaggerated gyrations and touches before every pitch, followed by a well-rehearsed comedy routine with reporters. He believes Sosa’s reaction to his newfound notoriety will determine how successful is the next, post-corking phase of his career.

“This will always hang over him,” he said. “How much he lets it bug him is up to him. If it bugs him a lot, it will curtail his career a great deal.”

Not surprisingly, Perry has no ethical objections to what Sosa did, admitting he corked a few bats himself.

“But I didn’t use them,” he said. “Check my batting average — it’s pretty obvious. It’s like spitting on the ball. You know it’s going to help. It’s fine with me. I have no problem with it. My feeling is, legalize it. Legalize the spitball. I might make a comeback.”

Perry was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1991, in his third try. Cheating or not, he had those 314 wins on his resume. Sosa reached another one of baseball’s cherished milestones earlier this season with his 500th home run.

With three seasons of 60-plus homers as well, Sosa would seem to be a first-ballot lock. Yet some have wondered if the corking incident might cause voters to reconsider.

“It depends on what he does from here on out,” Perry said. “If he doesn’t do a whole lot, it affects (his Hall of Fame chances) a great deal. If he does great, he gets in first time.”

In 22 seasons, Perry was caught just once. It occurred Aug. 23, 1982, shortly after he picked up his 300th victory with Seattle. After warning Perry in the fifth inning of a game with Boston at the Kingdome, umpire Dave Phillips ejected Perry in the seventh inning for throwing an illegal pitch, earning him a 10-game suspension.