• September 27, 1999
• Vol. 52
• No. 12

Winning Pitcher

Catfish Hunter Showed to the End the Heart That Earned Baseball's Love and Respect

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From PEOPLE Magazine

On July 17, Jim "Catfish" Hunter made one of his final public appearances—at a barbecue on his farm in Hertford, N.C., to raise money for a neighbor whose wife had just died of cancer. Although the ALS diagnosed last fall had already paralyzed the Hall of Fame pitcher's arms, Hunter rose at dawn that day and insisted that Helen, his wife of three decades, dress him and bring him down to the barbecue pits so he could make sure everything was done just right. "In this year since we've been dealing with the Lou Gehrig's disease, I tried to be an encouragement to him, but more often Jimmy was encouraging me," says Hunter's pastor, Keith Vaughan. "Even to the very end, he was willing to get out and help anybody."

For Hunter—whose nickname (which his friends rarely used) was chosen by the late Athletics owner Charles O. Finley simply because it sounded colorful—the end came Sept. 9. Five weeks after falling and suffering a serious concussion, he died at 53 in the North Carolina town where throwing baseballs at a hole in his father's barn door had taught him the extraordinary control that would bring him 224 big-league victories, a perfect game and five World Series rings with the Athletics and Yankees. He also earned a spot in baseball history as the game's first free-agent multimillionaire and in his teammates' hearts as an endearingly modest man with a dry, down-home wit. (Hearing Reggie Jackson had a candy bar named for him, Hunter drawled, "When you unwrap one, it tells you how good it is.") Said Jackson: "As great a pitcher as he was, he was a better person."

Hunter showed that quality during his dignified struggle against ALS, aided by wife Helen, 51, and their three children. "All my life he'd been my hero," says pastor Vaughan, 36. "I just wish every kid's hero could turn out to be as great."