''My three brothers taught me to throw strikes,'' he said when inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987, ''and thanks to them I gave up 379 home runs in the big leagues.''

Hunter was overstating things a bit, having given up 374 homers. And the control he developed by throwing baseballs at a hole in the barn door -- the last brother to hit the hole had to do the chores -- would pay off.

A Yankee teammate, pitcher Pat Dobson, once said about Hunter: ''He can put the ball where he wants it -- or within an inch or two, which is just about as good. From that one capacity stems everything else.''

On occasion, Hunter's family would travel to Baltimore to watch major league baseball. ''I remember once we were watching Robin Roberts there,'' Hunter said, ''and my father said, 'Hell, I could hit him; he's not throwing that hard.' We were sitting behind the plate, and Roberts really did look as though you could murder him. But nobody seemed to do it. I admired the heck out of Roberts. I just naturally patterned myself after him, and eventually I learned to do it, too.''

Major league hitters would feel the same way about Hunter as Hunter's father had felt about Roberts. ''I could never understand why I couldn't hit Hunter,'' said Ed Herrmann, an opponent who later became a teammate on the Yankees. ''Even when you're up at the plate, you think, just give me one more of those and I'll clout it out of here. But I rarely did.''

Hunter was known all his life as Jimmy in his home area. Finley, the A's flamboyant owner, gave him the nickname Catfish and apparently manufactured a story to go with it. ''Around here, we never call him Catfish,'' Ray Ward, editor of The Perquimans Weekly, once said. ''We call him Jimmy. Jimmy's mother has been upset about the nickname.'' The story created to go with the name: Hunter had once run away from home and come back with two catfish. ''His mother was irritated that somebody would believe her little boy ran off,'' Ward said.

During Hunter's senior year at Perquimans High School in Hertford, he was wounded in his right foot when his brother Pete's shotgun misfired, destroying the little toe and leaving the foot full of pellets. The Kansas City Athletics signed him anyway, for a $50,000 bonus, and sent him to the Mayo Clinic for surgery. He spent the 1964 season on the disabled list, but the foot did not bother him after the operation even though about 15 shotgun pellets remained.