The Milton Sports Guy salutes Tony Gwynn
Tony Gwynn homers off of David Wells in Game One of the 1998 World Series
On the heels of the never-ending steroid scandal/home run record chase involving Barry Bonds, the death of minor league third base coach Mike Coolbaugh and the usual ignorant, unsolicited comments recently by Gary Sheffield, Major League Baseball badly needed and finally produced a good news story over the weekend.
In Cooperstown, New York, two of baseball’s all-time greats in terms of on-field performance as well as off the field were inducted into the Hall of Fame – and believe me, baseball and the sporting scene in general needed this story as headlines of doping cyclists and pro athletes involved in dog fighting littered sports sections across North America.
Hats off to Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. who each played 20+ stellar seasons with the same team respectively, in the height of baseball’s first real free agent era. Both had the kind of careers that unquestionably deserved entry into the Hall, but more importantly, both were class acts in general, and you would be hard pressed to find two better sports role models during their era or today.
Ripken won a World Series championship with the Baltimore Orioles in 1983 – early in his career, and of course, would go on to play in 2,632 consecutive games, shattering Lou Gehrig’s decades-old record and redefining the shortstop position along the way. He also played alongside his brother Billy and father Cal Sr. in Baltimore, making his career truly a family affair.
Gwynn entered the league with his hometown Padres in 1982 after also being drafted by the NBA’s Clippers. 1982 would also be the last season he batted under .300 (a not-to-shabby .289). In 1984 he led the Padres to their first ever World Series appearance, winning his first of 8 N.L. batting titles along the way. Unfortunately, Gwynn wasn’t blessed with a lot of other talent around him during his career, and the Padres’ only other sniffs at the postseason came in 1996 and 1998. Again, Gwynn helped lead the Padres all the way to the World Series in 1998, where he achieved his self-professed career highlight – a massive home run into the upper deck at Yankee Stadium off Boomer Wells. Gwynn wasn’t able to win a title however, as the Padres ran up against two of the greatest teams of all time in their two World Series appearances, the ‘84 Tigers and the ‘98 Yankees.
What else did both of these legends have in common? Well, we can’t be 100% sure of course, but you have to think everything they accomplished was without the aid of performance-enhancing drugs. It would be staggering to find out otherwise. Ripken aged gracefully on the field – as his numbers and range declined, he seamlessly made the move to third base for the Orioles, and he retired at exactly the right time as his offensive production seriously dropped off during his last two seasons. Gwynn began his career as a svelte, two-sport athlete and base-stealing threat, swiping 56 in 1987. He also won 5 gold gloves for his steady, if unspectacular work roaming right field. By the time his career ended, he was pudgy, often injured and unable to stay in the lineup for consecutive weeks. One thing that didn’t suffer was his batting average though, never dropping below .300. Again, when he called it quits along with Ripken in 2001, it was the right time. Both players’ respective franchises needed to move on, and both athletes hung ‘em up before their performances declined so much as to taint their amazing accomplishments.
Contrast that with the careers of, um, I don’t know… say Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens… Both players seemed to find a ‘fountain of youth’ in the mid nineties and extend their careers, taking them to new heights. Now, whether this ‘fountain of youth’ was steroids, which would increase strength and decrease recovery time from injury (among other things) has not, and probably will not be 100% proven. Nonetheless, their freakish increase in performance level past the age of 40 has drawn the necessary suspicion to both of these players among others, forever tainting their accomplishments.
I’d like to especially tip my hat to Mr. Gwynn. I mentioned in my last baseball blog entry that, growing up in Southern Ontario, I was inexplicably a die-hard fan of the team geographically the furthest away from me: The San Diego Padres. I followed Gwynn as closely as I could before the days of the internet and 24-hour sports highlights from my northern outpost. What did this entail? Let’s just say some serious effort on my part, also three time zones away.
Are Tony Gwynn and Tony Pena having an ugly uniform contest?
First of all, why the Padres? All I can say is that they definitely caught my attention in my 1982 sticker book. The fad in the early ‘80’s, at least where I lived, was not baseball cards, but baseball stickers. Instead of bubble gum cards, you would buy a package of stickers and affix them to the proper place inside of the book you had already purchased. When completed, you would have this great album containing the visual lineups of all 26 (at the time) clubs as well as playoff photos and all-star teams. To a 10-year old kid, the classic, traditional uni’s of teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Tigers left me cold, and I was drawn to things like the Cleveland Indians logo, the Astros’ lovely orange-striped popsicle jerseys and of course, the pièce de résistance, the Padres’ brown, orange and yellow outfits, complete with yellow socks, white shoes and a nifty swingin’ friar logo. How could they not be my team? (Not the Jays – the ‘local’ team you ask? After attending my first Jay game in 1981 – yes, I was a fan, and they became my A.L. team thanks to the ‘local’ and ‘Canadian’ angle, but they never quite had the intrigue the Padres did). Now, I have to admit, my Padre fandom took a serious hit in 1991 when they ditched the brown which made them unique, for a more conservative navy and orange colour scheme, but with Gwynn still in his prime, I stayed the course. I still think the Padres should revert back to using brown somehow – I have ideas as to how this can be done ‘tastefully’, if you can use that word to define any brown uniforms, but that’s a blog for another day…
Following Gwynn’s career as I mentioned, wasn’t easy. I remember checking boxscores two days later most of the time, as west coast games didn’t make it into my local paper (the London Free Press) until then. Padre scores were rarely mentioned on local sports broadcasts (TV or radio), so finding out a score from the day before meant calling a ‘sportsline’ number where you could listen to pre-recorded scores. The Padres would always be the last result read, and I waited with baited breath to hear if they won or lost a night earlier.
One of my all-time sports highlights was the 1984 baseball playoffs. After my Padres lost two in Wrigley Field to the heavily favoured Cubs (the first game by a score of 13-0 and I should mention the Wrigley faithful also chucked a big, purple smoke bomb on the field at Tony Gwynn, damn them), they rebounded back in San Diego to win three straight and earn the right to be spanked by the Tigers in the World Series. The games in San Diego were fantastic and I remember watching every inning of games 4 and 5 over Canadian thanksgiving weekend: Steve Garvey homered in the ninth to win Game 4 to tie the series and the Padres scored 6 unanswered runs to win game five 6-3, highlighted by Gwynn’s famous bad-bounce double over the head of Ryne Sandberg into right field. My heart sank a week later when Kirk Gibson clinched the World Series for the Tigers by launching the clinching home run off of Goose Gossage into the upper deck at Tiger Stadium on a cold, October night, followed by Tony Gwynn fouling out to Larry Herndon to end the game. It didn’t matter though – after adopting them as my team in 1982 and to witness a marvelous playoff run two years later, I was hooked (not to mention the tasty ‘homage to McDonald’s’ brown uni’s).
I continued to follow Gwynn’s accomplishments over the years, still reading the boxscores two days later – Gwynn: 2 for 4, Gwynn: 3 for 4, Gwynn: 1 for 3 etc. TV? Usually I would see them play a few times a year between Expos games on CBC, Pirates games on one of the Erie, PA channels and occasionally (very rarely) on the Saturday NBC game of the week (I believe the first time I ever saw a Padre game live was an NBC game - Los Angeles at San Diego with Juan Eichelberger pitching for the Padres… but I digress). Again, this was before the days of TSN in Canada and it was quite a chore to tune in stations from Erie across the lake (I grew up near London, ON) with our big antenna as our town didn’t have cable TV at the time (I can’t believe I just typed that). Gwynn usually appeared in All-Star games as well, so I would watch with interest to see how many at bats and innings he would play.
The ultimate Padre/Gwynn TV highlight came in 1986, where I stayed up for the 10pm start vs. the Pirates, obviously in San Diego. A classic pitching matchup between heavyweights LaMarr Hoyt of the Pads and Rick Reuschel of the Pirates. With my VCR recording and the Padres trailing 2-0, rookie John Kruk doubled in the first run for the Padres in the eighth inning (about 12:30am), followed by who else, TGwynn nailing a 3-run homer to right off of Larry McWilliams to put the Padres up for good, 4-2. A few years later, I erased that tape, and boy, what I wouldn’t give to have that in my collection today…
1994 was a banner year for Gwynn, but that of course gets forgotten these days because of the famous strike. Not only was the World Series catastrophically cancelled that season, but it also probably helped expedite the Expos’ eventual move to DC. As the best team in baseball when the season ‘ended’, they were robbed of the chance to win their first World Series. The strike also halted Gwynn’s quest to bat .400 - he finished at an amazing .394 and we’ll never know whether he would have challenged the incomprehensible .400 mark or if he would have faded and dropped down closer to his 1987 mark of .370. One of my lasting visions of 1994 will also be of Gwynn leaping in the air and pumping his fist after scoring the game-winning run in the All-Star game in Pittsburgh on a double by Moises Alou.
With the Padres usually not in contention, it was a long drought until the playoff run of ‘98. By then, no longer a base-stealing threat, and his career ever-so-slightly beginning to decline, the portly Gwynn hit the aforementioned home run at Yankee Stadium, going back-to-back with Greg Vaughn, pacing the Padres to an early lead which would unfortunately be their only highlight of the Series. The Yankees came back to win the game and the series 4-0, ending Gwynn’s last chance for a championship and adding him to the list of legendary players like Ernie Banks who failed to win it all. It was too bad, but to Gwynn, loyalty to the Padre organization was most important. He admitted he could have chased the money and in turn, that elusive title by joining another club - but he was meant to be a Padre. He also admitted that winning a World Series probably wouldn’t have ‘felt right’ in some other city. As a fan, it was also nice to see him avoid jumping around from team to team in the last few years of his career in search of either a ring or more coin. Gwynn played the game the right way, both on and off the field. Even though he couldn’t get the Padres over the hump, he left the game with nothing to be ashamed of.
Again, how refreshing was it to see these two players be honoured this past weekend? Tell me it wasn’t great to see those clips of Ripken doing a lap of Camden Yards after breaking Gehrig’s record in 1995, ‘high-fiving’ fans in the first few rows along the way. Tell me it wasn’t great watching Gwynn effortlessly slap a base hit up the middle or through the hole between third and short and his final lap of Jack Murphy Stadium (I refuse to call it Qualcomm) after his last game. Whether it was showing up to work ready to play every day for over 15 straight seasons, or studying video to perfect an already perfect swing, these two players were the model of consistency for over 20 years. They were never in the tabloids, no drug scandals, no outlandish comments, no fighting with teammates - they just played baseball and had fun. You could tell they had a respect for the game and knew that they were lucky to be blessed with the talent to perform at the highest level of their sport. They defined the term ‘professional’, and felt privileged to be able to play a kids’ game and be handsomely paid and adored for it.
When my son and daughter are a little older and ready to compete seriously in sports, I’ll tell them about Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken. I’ll be proud to share the story of their careers. In a way, it’s unfortunate - there are a select few athletes inside or outside of baseball these days that you would want to hold up as a role model for your children. I guess I’ll just have to consider myself lucky to be of an age to have seen them both play their entire careers and be honoured for their accomplishments. Congratulations gentlemen.
Now, onto the debate over who was better: Gwynn or Ripken? Gwynn had the batting titles, Ripken had ‘the streak’. Gwynn was a force in the N.L., Ripken the A.L. Ripken has a championship ring, but it was so early on in his career and he wasn’t really a factor. It’s a tough call. A coin flip.
Actually, check that. I just thought of something that tips the scales in Gwynn’s favour. It’s a small detail, but something that shows a little extra strength of character and it’s enough to give the advantage to my guy.
Tony Gwynn had to wear a brown uniform.