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Motivation Quote by Catfish Hunter

"I had some friends here from North Carolina who'd never seen a homer, so I gave them a couple"

About this Quote

It lands because it treats an almost mythic baseball moment with the breezy hospitality of a guy offering seconds at dinner. Catfish Hunter, a pitcher, is talking about surrendering home runs as if he were a tour guide making sure out-of-towners get the full experience. The joke isn’t just self-deprecation; it’s a flex disguised as humility. Only someone secure in his command of the game can turn failure into a gift.

The specific intent is comic deflection. Pitchers are measured by damage control, and a homer is the loudest kind of damage. Hunter sidesteps the sting by reframing the blast as entertainment, even generosity. That move protects the psyche pitchers need: short memory, long confidence. It also plays to baseball’s ritual of storytelling, where exaggeration and deadpan are part of the clubhouse currency.

The subtext is control. By narrating the homers as something he “gave,” Hunter keeps authorship of the event. He doesn’t “allow” or “serve up” home runs; he dispenses them. The language turns randomness and vulnerability into a choice, a reminder that the pitcher’s mindset is half performance, half myth-making.

Context matters: Hunter came up in an era when athletes weren’t brand-managed soundbite machines. The charm is how unprocessed it feels - Southern politeness colliding with professional competitiveness. It’s a line that makes the game human: even at the highest level, the story you tell about your mistakes can be as important as the mistake itself.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Hunter, Catfish. (2026, January 17). I had some friends here from North Carolina who'd never seen a homer, so I gave them a couple. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-had-some-friends-here-from-north-carolina-whod-45860/

Chicago Style
Hunter, Catfish. "I had some friends here from North Carolina who'd never seen a homer, so I gave them a couple." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-had-some-friends-here-from-north-carolina-whod-45860/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I had some friends here from North Carolina who'd never seen a homer, so I gave them a couple." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-had-some-friends-here-from-north-carolina-whod-45860/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.

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Catfish Hunter Quote: I Had Some Friends Here from North Carolina
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About the Author

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Catfish Hunter (April 8, 1946 - September 9, 1999) was a Athlete from USA.

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