Ride For Life: Catfish's widow continues fight

RALEIGH -- Baseball Hall of Famer Jim "Catfish" Hunter lost his physical battle with Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1999 ago when he was only 53.

But his widow, Helen, didn't give up the fight against the killer illness better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Helen Hunter, along with Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry and Catfish's New York Yankees teammate Tommy John, were at the RBC Center on Tuesday to promote the third Field of Dreams Gala, an ALS research fund-raiser Jan. 31 at the Washington Duke Inn.

Other notables scheduled to attend the 6 p.m. event include former UNC basketball coach Dean Smith, Boston Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon, former major-league manager Clyde King, PGA golf instructor Harvie Ward, and Jeff Idelson, the vice president of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

"I'm here to fight for others who have ALS," Helen Hunter said. "My husband died in 1999. We had been married 33 years, and we got to see a lot of things and go a lot of places we would never have been."

The Hunters, who were high-school sweethearts at Perquimans High, also had three children -- Todd, 33, an insurance agent; Kim, 30, a sixth-grade teacher; and Paul, 24, a senior at Elizabeth City State. They all live near their mother in Hertford County.

Catfish Hunter, who was given the nickname early in his career by eccentric Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley, went 224-166 and didn't miss a start from 1965-77. A Cy Young Award winner who also was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Hunter's plaque at Cooperstown reads, "The bigger the game, the better he pitched."

"And I was nervous every time he pitched," Helen Hunter said. "I suppose my best memory was his perfect game. There weren't that many fans that night, but it was really special."

Perry, a Williamston native who pitched for eight major-league teams, said he was happy just to see another "Good old country boy" from Eastern North Carolina make it in the big time.

"I was a better fisherman than he was, but he was a better hunter -- I guess that's why he had the name," Perry said. "I was always so proud of him. He came up as a sharecropper's son like I was.

"He loved to hunt and fish, and he loved the game of baseball. He was out there at the start of the game, and he was usually out there when it was over. He was just a great pitcher."

John, who lives in Charlotte and is the pitching coach for Edmonton of the Pacific Coast League, said that Hunter was one of the most fun members of a talented Yankees team that became known as "The Bronx Zoo."

"I just remember all the things that used to go on in the clubhouse," John said. "If the media had only known all the things that got said in there.

"Cat always found a way to get on Lou Piniella. I think he must have stayed up late at night thinking up things to say. But just watching Cat and Piniella and Reggie [Jackson] and Thurman Munson and Graig Nettles was a lot of fun."

Jerry Dawson, the executive director of the Jim "Catfish" Hunter Chapter of the ALS Association, said that there is only one FDA-approved drug for the disease, a medicine known as Ritulek that costs about $800 a month.

"Most of the patients have to pay out of pocket," Dawson said. "We need to keep finding better treatments and more funding. Three companies at Research Triangle Park are working on new treatments right now."