Today, Tony Gwynn passed away from cancer, related to his chewing tobacco use in his playing days. At the age of 54, baseball lost one of their legends and one of the more recent inductees to the 3000 hit club.
Tony Gwynn's career contained feats such as winning the NL batting title eight times, fifteen time all-star, five gold glove awards, and 2007 first ballot inductee into the Hall of Fame. His career batting average was .338 and never dipped below .309 in any one season. After his career was over, he continued to remain connected to baseball by taking over as the head coach for San Diego State baseball. He took leave in March for medical reasons and unfortunately never returned to his role.
One of the more unknown things about Tony Gwynn was that he almost didn't become a baseball player. He was recruited by San Diego State out of Long Beach Poly High School as a highly touted point guard. In his freshmen year, he only played basketball. During his sophomore, an bicycling accident that injured two of San Diego State's outfielders, left the college baseball team in need. Jim Dietz gave Tony Gwynn a chance to try out and from there, everything is history. He won All-American honors in his junior and senior years, playing leftfield and designated hitter. In basketball he won Western Athletic Conference all conference awards twice. In the 1981, he was selected in the third round by the San Diego Padres with the 58th overall pick. On the same day, the NBA held their draft and the San Diego Clippers selected him in the tenth round.
He was the definition of a player that was self made. He consistently used video of his at-bats to study his own flaws and to study the tendencies of the pitchers he would face. Without this ability, he could not have been the consistent .300+ hitter he became. He constantly made adjustments to improve his hitting. One such adjustment was when joined the Padres minor league system, he had trouble converting over to wood bats from the aluminum bats college used. He made the adjustment to drop to a 32" inch bat that weighed only 31 ounces to mimic the weight of the aluminum bats. Despite losing a couple of inches on the length of the bat, he was able to control his swings better.
He created the term "5.5 hole" because he often would drive the ball to the opposite field between the third baseman (5) and the shortstop (6). Earlier in his career he was able to run, including stealing 56 bases in 1987. Eight knee surgeries slowed him down towards the end of his career.
In summation of his career, fellow major league all-star outfielder Joe Carter said he played with or against three of the games greatest "game changers" and listed them as 1) Kirby Puckett, 2) Paul Molitor, and 3) Tony Gwynn.
The Gwynn family had an odd knack for dates too. Tony Gwynn obtained his 3,000th hit on his mother's birthday. Exactly twenty-four years to the day after getting his first hit (a double), Tony Gwynn Jr. obtained his first hit as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers, also a double.
After the end of his career, the Padres retired his number 19 and unveiled a statue of him at Petco Park with the term "Mr. Padre" inscribed into the base of it. It was fitting as he spent his entire career with the organization which became a rarity in his generation. Despite player during the "steroid era", he was one of the few all-star hitters not to be accused of any wrong doing. His career often paralleled fellow hitters Wade Boggs and Kirby Puckett. In his fifty-four years, he displayed 100% class which is hard to come by in sports today.
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