John Hundley walked up to the door of a doctor's office just outside Jacksonville, Fla., where the Auburn native called home for more than 20 years. He grabbed the handle, and gave it a tug. A glance behind him revealed a line of people who were headed inside. He turned to his sister, Mary Heath.

“We can't go in yet,” he said.

So they waited until everyone else had passed through the entrance. Then the siblings made their way inside. Hundley, a cancer patient, was on his way in for treatment. It was just weeks before he passed away, on July 5. He was 50.

“He could barely walk, and he stood there and held the door for all these people,” Heath recalled. “That's just how he felt about others.”

It was just John being John.

From the very beginning, it was clear Hundley was meant to play baseball. Heath, four years older than him, still remembers watching her younger brother throw the baseball around the small back yard of their parents' home when he was just a toddler. He played with his father, Chuck, and his brother, Mark, who was six years John's elder.

“He ate, lived and breathed baseball,” Heath said of John. “It was his total life.”

John would do anything to be able to play. When Mark asked if he wanted to play, the answer was always an enthusiastic yes. Of course, that meant Mark was the pitcher and John had to be the catcher - and the left-handed John had to use a right-handed catcher's mitt that didn't even have any webbing left. But Mark said his brother would do just about anything to play baseball.

To hear him tell it, the conversations went like this:

Mark: “I want to play catch.”

John: “OK.”

Mark, pointing to the right-handed catcher's mitt: “This is the only glove I have for you.”

John: “Let's do it.”

“We did it constantly,” Mark said, remembering back to when he was 14, and John was 8. “I used to force him to catch me. I used to throw very hard, and he would do everything he could to catch it. I was pretty wild.”

Eventually, though, John got his chance to pitch. And boy, could he pitch. It probably stemmed from his fiery attitude.

“He was the most competitive guy I ever met, even back then,” said Pete Sargent, a lifelong friend of Hundley's since they met at the age of 8. “Most kids, after a loss, still go get ice cream and be happy. Not him. We could get beat and he'd sulk for 10 days.”

Fortunately for him, he didn't lose much.

He tossed a perfect game for the Maroons in high school, and he helped Auburn to a 55-16 record during his four-year varsity stint from 1971-74. His prowess on the mound earned him a scholarship to LeMoyne College to play baseball. There, he was met with similar success. He was 7-0 in 1976 with three shutouts, and he helped the Dolphins compete for the national championship in 1978. Then-Dolphins coach Dick Rockwell wasn't sold on Hundley right away, though. He took some persuading.

“I just didn't think he had the velocity,” Rockwell said, recalling his scouting report on Hundley. “(Bucky Winters, then-Marcellus coach) convinced me. As it turned out, he was right, and we won an awful lot of games from '74 to '78. John was a key factor in that whole thing.

“John was the first and only pitcher who had a knuckleball that was just unhittbale.”

So when college came to a close, it just seemed logical that John would suit up in the pros. He had a few chances playing for the Auburn Sunsets of the New York-Penn League. Rockwell, who was the manager of the team - which was a co-op at the time with the Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Red Sox - brought with him some players who had graduated from LeMoyne. Hundley was one of them.

He saw limited action, and when word came down from the top that Rockwell had to make room for other guys, Hundley had to hit the road.

“One of the hardest things I ever had to do was tell him he couldn't pitch,” Rockwell said. “They understood, though.”

He bounced around to places such as Rocky Mountain, N.C., where he met his wife, Shelly. He also eventually had a son, David, now 19.

Though his playing days would come to an end, his passion for baseball never did.

He was consumed by the sport - even at work.

Heath told the story of when the son of one of his co-workers stepped into the workplace and happened to have a ball in his hand, Hundley offered to take him out and play catch. They never made it outside, but they tossed that ball back and forth right there in the office, as he showed the youngster how to grip the ball for different pitches.

Even in his final weeks, he never let go of baseball.

“I'm still waiting for my big-league break,” he told his sister, while he was lying in bed.

Heath was speechless.

“What could you do?” she said of her reaction to Hundley's remarks. “You couldn't tell him this was not going to happen. He was absolutely serious. He was always like, 'I'm going to beat this.'”

It was just John being John.

Hundley the baseball player and Hundley the man were as different as night and day.

“He was the most fun-loving guy you'd ever meet,” Sargent said. “It was like Jekyll and Hyde from the baseball field to his regular life.

“But as good of an athlete as he was, he was an even better person.”

Hundley's competitiveness on the field was equaled by his nonchalant attitude off it. Described as easy going, friends said that nothing ever seemed to bother him, and he was almost never upset. And the way his brother described him, John was, “the friend that you always wanted to have around.”

That had a lot to do with his sense of humor.

“He always believed that you had to laugh every day at something,” Sargent said. “The good thing about it was he could laugh at himself. No matter what happened, he didn't mind laughing with you or at you.”

It's also something he never lost.

“As soon as you think of him, you have an image in your mind of him laughing,” Heath said. “He was just so jovial. Laughter was always the best medicine. Even when he was sick he was still joking with me.

“He lived life to the fullest to the very last day. He did not let it bother him. He was more worried about everyone else. He kept asking how everyone was doing.”

It was just John being John.

Since Hundley passed away, Heath has been bombarded with phone calls from all kinds of people from all different states.

“I just think it's wonderful that he touched so many lives,” Heath said.

Even after his death, he'll continue to touch lives. In Hundley's honor, Sargent and some other members of the AHS class of 1974 are starting the John Hundley Memorial Scholarship Fund, which will be awarded to Auburn High School baseball players.

“It's a wonderful, wonderful idea to keep John's memory alive,” Heath said. “He would have loved that.”

He'll also be living on in the memories of those who knew him best.

Sargent was visiting Hundley shortly before he passed. Having a distinct feeling it was the last time he was going to see his friend, Sargent said his goodbyes and got up to leave. As he made his way to the door, Hundley, still sporting his ever-positive attitude, shouted after him.

“You're going to come back down to see me.”

Sargent could only smile and nod.

It was just John being John.