Catfish Hunter

James Augustus Hunter was born April 8, 1946, in Hertford, North Carolina, a farm town of about 2,000 people, the youngest of eight kids. His father Abbott was a tenant farmer and logging foreman who taught all of them to hunt and fish. Jim learned to pitch in backyard games against his brothers, where the rule was simple. You threw strikes or you didn't play.

At Perquimans County High he won state titles in football, track and baseball. Then on Thanksgiving Day 1963, his brother Pete's shotgun went off by accident on the way home from a hunting trip and hit Jim in the right foot. He lost his small toe and dozens of pellets lodged in the foot. Plenty of scouts backed off. He went 13 and 1 his senior season with five no hitters, including a perfect game.

One scout never left. Clyde Kluttz of the Kansas City A's practically lived at the Hunter house, and he talked Charlie Finley into it. Finley came to Hertford, watched him pitch, and signed him for $75,000 in 1964. Finley also decided a ballplayer needed a nickname, asked Jim what he liked to do, and when Jim said hunting and fishing, made up a story about a runaway kid and two catfish. Jim Hunter became Catfish Hunter over the phone.

He made his big league debut on May 13, 1965, at 19, after the Mayo Clinic pulled more pellets out of his foot. He went 8 and 8 for a team that lost 103 games. He didn't throw especially hard. What he had was command, and a willingness to throw strikes even right after somebody hit one out against him, which impressed his pitching coach Ed Lopat.

The A's moved to Oakland in 1968, and on May 8 of that first season Catfish threw a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins at the Coliseum. He struck out 11, and he also went 3 for 4 at the plate with three RBIs in a 4 to 0 win. It was the first perfect game in the American League regular season since 1922. Only 6,298 people were there.

In 1971 he won 21 games and the A's won 101 and the West, though Baltimore swept them in the ALCS. That was the start of four straight 20 win seasons in Oakland. In 1972 he won 21 more with a 2.04 ERA, allowed one run in eight and two thirds innings in Game 2 of the World Series against Cincinnati, and won Game 7 in relief at Riverfront Stadium for the franchise's first title since 1930.

1973 was 21 and 5. He beat Baltimore twice in the ALCS, including a shutout in the deciding Game 5 at the Coliseum. Then with Oakland facing elimination in Game 6 of the World Series, he outpitched Tom Seaver 3 to 1, and the A's won Game 7 the next day.

1974 was the best of all of it. He led the league with 25 wins and a 2.49 ERA, won the Cy Young, saved Game 1 of the World Series against the Dodgers by striking out Joe Ferguson for the final out, and won Game 3 at the Coliseum. Three straight championships, and Catfish was the ace of every one.

Then it came apart. Hunter's 1974 contract required Finley to pay half his salary into an insurance annuity, and Finley didn't. The players union moved to terminate the contract, and on December 16, 1974, arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled in Hunter's favor and made him a free agent. Teams descended on Ahoskie, North Carolina, to bid, and on New Year's Eve he signed with the Yankees. Clyde Kluttz was scouting for New York by then. Catfish said he wouldn't have signed with them if anybody but Clyde had asked.

He won 23 games in 1975 with 30 complete games and three pennants in New York followed, two of them championships. Diabetes and a worn arm slowed him, and 1979 brought the deaths of Kluttz, his father and Thurman Munson within three months. He retired after that season at 33 with 224 wins and five rings, and went home to his farm.

He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1987. The A's retired his number 27 on June 9, 1991, the first number the franchise ever retired, and in 2004 they created the Catfish Hunter Award. He was diagnosed with ALS in 1998 and died at home in Hertford on September 9, 1999. He was 53. In 2018 his widow Helen accepted his place in the first class of the A's Hall of Fame.

Catfish went 4 and 0 in World Series play with Oakland, and he did it with control, not power. He didn't beat himself with walks, and in October that's the whole thing. In the 1973 ALCS clincher he shut out the Orioles. In the 1973 Series, facing elimination in Game 6, he beat Tom Seaver.

He also did whatever the game asked. In Game 7 of the 1972 World Series he came out of the bullpen in the fifth inning and got the win. In Game 1 of the 1974 Series he came in to get the last out and the save. That's an ace doing whatever the game needed, on the biggest stage there is.

Reggie said he'd give Cat the Cy Young, the MVP, the Academy Award and the kitchen sink after 1974. When the loudest guy in the clubhouse says that about the quiet one, you believe him.