The day the modern athlete was born.

On New Year's Day, 1975, Catfish Hunter left the Oakland A's for a three-million-dollar contract with the New York Yankees, becoming the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history.

Sports journalist Bill Libby, author of Parnelli, follows Hunter from his years anchoring the Oakland A's through their three World Series titles (1972, 1973, and 1974) to the auction that made him a superstar. The book draws on direct cooperation from Hunter, Reggie Jackson, and figures from across baseball.

Catfish: The Three Million Dollar Pitcher is an insider account of the moment modern sports flew, for better or worse, into the stratosphere.

Readers of baseball biography, sports history, free agency, sports management, and the lives of American athletes will find, in this deeply researched work, a primary-source account of one of the transactions that reshaped American professional sports.