Catfish Hunter

Baseball Player

• Born: April 8, 1946
• Birthplace: Hertford, North Carolina
• Died: September 9, 1999
• Place of death: Hertford, North Carolina

Sport: Baseball

Early Life

Born on April 8, 1946, on his father’s farm near Hertford in Perquimans County, North Carolina, James Augustus Hunter was the youngest of eight children. Jim grew up on the farm and constantly played baseball with his family and friends. Baseball was much more fun than the classroom, and Jim skipped his elementary school classes frequently. Jim also appreciated the outdoors. He especially enjoyed fishing and hunting.

The Road to Excellence

At Perquimans High School in Hertford, Jim played varsity baseball and football. When he hurled five no-hitters, he attracted the attention of a number of major-league scouts. During Thanksgiving break of his senior year in high school, he was out hunting with his brother Pete when his brother’s gun misfired, wounding Jim’s right foot. Doctors amputated his small toe and removed pellets from his foot. Many scouts who had been interested in Jim had second thoughts about his potential to pitch in the big leagues, except for Clyde Kluttz, who scouted for the Kansas City Athletics (A’s).

The A’s owner, Charles O. Finley, listened to Kluttz’s advice and personally signed the right-hander to a hefty fifty-thousand-dollar bonus contract. Then Finley sent Jim to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where a second operation was performed on his injured foot. Although twenty-seven shotgun pellets were removed by the clinic’s expert surgeons, another fifteen pieces of buckshot could not be safely removed. Jim pitched his entire career with the pellets lodged in his right foot.

Finley signed Jim and a number of other young high school and college stars during the 1960’s and the early 1970’s in an effort to rebuild his perennially weak baseball team. Always looking for ways to promote his team, Finley nicknamed Jim “Catfish” when he learned from Jim’s mother, Millie Hunter, that Jim loved casting for freshwater catfish. The nickname stuck with him throughout his big-league career.

Usually, baseball players spend a number of seasons in the minors, where they learn the fundamentals of the game and acquire the experience needed to perform in the major leagues. Pitchers, in particular, need several years to mature. Catfish, however, was rushed by the Kansas City management into the big leagues and never pitched a day in the minors. Playing for the last-place A’s, lacking seasoning, and beset by a number of nagging injuries, Catfish’s first few years in the majors were a trying experience.

The Emerging Champion

During his early years in the major leagues, Catfish showed flashes of his future greatness. In 1966 and 1967, he was named to the American League all-star team. On May 8, 1968, soon after Finley moved his franchise to Oakland, California, Catfish startled the baseball world with a perfect game, retiring all 27 batters he faced—the first regular season perfect game hurled in the American League since 1922.

What plagued Catfish during the early part of his major-league career was his inconsistency and his penchant for giving up the home-run ball. Catfish did not begin to win consistently until the spring of 1970, when the A’s pitching coach Bill Posedel and manager John McNamara made some key adjustments in his pitching mechanics that kept his pitches low in the strike zone.

During the early 1970’s, the 6-foot, 195-pound pitcher became one of the mainstays of a powerful A’s baseball team that won three consecutive World Series (1972-1974). During those three fantastic seasons, Catfish won 21, 21, and 25 games and repeatedly proved himself a “clutch” performer, notching crucial victories in the playoffs and posting a perfect 4-0 record in World Series competition. Catfish’s 25-win season in 1974 and his league-leading earned run average (2.49) earned him the Cy Young Award. His pinpoint control, his mastery over his breaking pitches, and his willingness to challenge the hitters with a good, but not overpowering, fastball made him an imposing force on the mound.

Catfish’s success on the baseball diamond made him a valuable player. When it came time to renegotiate Catfish’s contract during the 1974 season, Finley, who had a well-deserved reputation for stinginess, refused to abide by the terms of the contract that required him to pay half of Catfish’s salary on a deferred basis. The dispute went to arbitration after the 1974 season, and a three-person panel upheld Catfish’s claim and declared him a free agent, eligible to sell his services to the highest bidding team. Despite more lucrative offers from other teams, Catfish signed with the New York Yankees, in part because the Yankees employed Catfish’s old friend, baseball scout Clyde Kluttz, who persuaded the superstar to sign with the Yankees.

Continuing the Story

Catfish signed a five-year contract with the Yankees estimated at more than three million dollars, making him the highest paid pitcher in baseball. Despite the fame he received from his lucrative contract and the increased media attention in New York, Catfish remained unaffected by his celebrity status. He took the big-city pressure in stride, and in his first year with the Yankees, he won twenty-three games, marking his fifth consecutive year with at least 20 victories. Catfish also helped the Yankees win the World Series in 1977 and 1978.

While Catfish was with the Yankees, he had to overcome a different obstacle. At the age of thirty-one, he learned that he had diabetes. With proper medical treatment, he fought this problem.

Interestingly, when Catfish signed the big-money deal in 1975, he told the Yankees management that he would retire from baseball when his contract expired at the end of the 1979 season. In 1979, Catfish’s father, Abbott, died, then Clyde Kluttz passed away, and, tragically, Yankees catcher Thurman Munson was killed in a plane crash. Even though he was only thirty-three years old, Catfish decided to abide by his earlier decision and retire from baseball.

True to form, Catfish returned to his roots in rural Hertford, North Carolina, and, after his retirement, he farmed soybeans, corn, turnips, and peanuts. With his wife, Helen—who was his high school sweetheart—he reared two children, Kimberly and Todd, who grew up on the farm just as their father did.

Catfish also kept his hand in baseball by occasionally playing semiprofessional ball near Hertford, and every year during spring training, he took time off from the farm to help instruct Yankees pitchers. Fittingly, Catfish was a national spokesperson for the National Diabetes Foundation. When he was named to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987, he not only demonstrated his humility but also gave credit to those people in his life who had played a pivotal role in his early years—his parents, his high school coach, an elementary schoolteacher, and his brothers.

In March, 1998, Catfish was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and began treatment at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. He struggled with the disease for more than a year until a fall in August, 1999, left him unconscious for several days. He regained consciousness, and his condition began to improve, but on September 9, 1999, the former Yankees great died at his home in North Carolina.

Summary

Many excellent baseball players have never played on a world championship team. Catfish Hunter played on five such teams in seven years with the A’s and the Yankees. His steady pitching throughout his fifteen-year major-league career earned him a place in baseball immortality in the Hall of Fame. Never spoiled by fame and fortune, Catfish left baseball at an early age so he could return to the rural countryside where he was born to raise a family, work a farm, and hunt and fish, just as he did as a youngster.

Bibliography

Adelman, Tom. The Long Ball: The Summer of ’75—Spaceman, Catfish, Charlie Hustle, and the Greatest World Series Ever Played. Boston: Little, Brown, 2003.

Hickey, David, and Kerry Keene. The Proudest Yankees of All: From the Bronx to Cooperstown. Lanham, Md.: Taylor Trade, 2003.

Markusen, Bruce. “A Tribute to Catfish Hunter.” Baseball Digest 59, no. 1 (2000).

Roberts, Russell. One Hundred Baseball Legends Who Shaped Sports History. San Mateo, Calif.: Bluewood Books, 2003.