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csnews.com
July 13, 2004
SECTION: NEWS; News
LENGTH: 250 words
HEADLINE: Red Apple Markets Raise Awareness, Funds for ALS
SOURCE: Online

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Red Apple Markets are encouraging all customers to participate in the Jim "Catfish" Hunter Baseball Campaign to "Strike Out ALS," which will raise awareness and funds for the Jim "Catfish" Hunter chapter of the ALS Association.

Red Apple Market customers can visit any one of the 42 convenience stores in northeastern North Carolina and southern Virginia to purchase a paper baseball in honor of all people living with and fighting ALS. The balls will be sold for $1 and displayed in each location's window. Customers will also receive Catfish Hunter baseball cards.       

"Red Apple is encouraging customers to visit area locations to support a very worthwhile cause -- a cause especially close to the heart of many people in northeastern North Carolina and southern Virginia, the home of Jim 'Catfish' Hunter," said Adam Coleman, vice president and chief operating officer of Beasley Enterprises Inc. "Their support will help find a cause and cure for this devastating disease."

Red Apple Markets is a subsidiary of Beasley Enterprises Inc., located in southern Virginia and northeast North Carolina.

ALS affects as many as 30,000 people in the United States at any given time and 5,600 new cases are diagnosed annually. The Jim "Catfish" Hunter Chapter was named in honor of the late major league pitcher and member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Hunter succumbed to complications of ALS in September 1999, after being diagnosed with the disease in 1998.