R.I.P. Tony Gwynn

[phen0m2112]

from cancer at 54.

Heres the link.


One of the most patient hitters I've ever seen. You could NOT strike him out.

[Deleted]

You mean Tony Gwynn, right? Puckett was years ago...

[Deleted]

Um, Tony Gwynn, not Kirby Puckett

[phen0m2112]

Jun 16, 2014 10:53:32 GMT -5 @vyse said:

You mean Tony Gwynn, right? Puckett was years ago...

corrected and thank you.

[Deleted]

Jun 16, 2014 10:54:16 GMT -5 phen0m2112 said:

Jun 16, 2014 10:53:32 GMT -5 @vyse said:

You mean Tony Gwynn, right? Puckett was years ago...

corrected and thank you.

No problem.

Gwynn was an absolute beast. Believe he hit .500 during the 98 WS.

[Deleted]

Holy shit, really?

f***, dude that's really saddening. RIP.

Guy was an absolute monster at the plate.

[Deleted]

Casey Kasem's death didn't stun me.

This one did. :C

[Perd]

Great hitter and seemed like a really good guy too. RIP

[Display Name]

Bummer.I met him during Padres practice in the mid 90's and he was a nice dude.Still have that autographed ball somewhere.

[fw91]

Bummer. Thought his cancer was under control/taken care of/not aggressive etc.

[Sam Punk]

He was a good man.

[turkeysandwich]

When I saw this thread I said "what". I knew he had mouth cancer, but I had no idea it was that serious. He was Ted Williams' favorite modern player, and (like Babe Ruth) is improperly remembered as a fat guy who couldn't run when that was only the way he was his last couple of years. While I realize its "part of the game" perhaps baseball will start looking into totally banning tobacco use on the field, because there is no reason for one of their greats to die so young because of something so useless.

[bluemeii]

Nah this fat guy could run...at least the first half of his career. Hell he had numerous seasons in the 80s where he stole more bases than times he struck out.

Really was a great, and truthfully in this day and age, under appreciated baseball player.

edit : Love how MLB.com has his full name down as Anthony "Mr. Padre" Keith Gwynn...nice touch

[angryfan]

Jun 16, 2014 13:26:10 GMT -5 bluemeii said:

Nah this fat guy could run...at least the first half of his career. Hell he had numerous seasons in the 80s where he stole more bases than times he struck out.

Really was a great, and truthfully in this day and age, under appreciated baseball player.

edit : Love how MLB.com has his full name down as Anthony "Mr. Padre" Keith Gwynn...nice touch

He could run, and he could hit with power if he felt like it. I remember when he had one season with a low (for him) batting average of "just" .309 but he hit a lot more homers than usual. He said something like "I can do it, but I don't like to, my hands get greedy and I don't have as much bat control".

Pretty much if you gave him a bat, he could do anything he wanted to, at will.

Another part of my youth gone too soon, a legend, and by all accounts a wonderful person. One stat that jumped out at me, he struck out a grand total, not kidding, of 434 times. It's not the record (that's an ungodly 114 total by Joe Sewell), but it speaks to his skill with the bat.

[Raskovnik]

Ugh, f***. One of my favorite players. I met him when I was playing Little League and he was so cool, he gave me some batting tips because we were both left-handed and he autographed the card I have of him. I still have it somewhere. RIP.

[ToyfareMark]

Jun 16, 2014 13:00:12 GMT -5 turkeysandwich said:

When I saw this thread I said "what". I knew he had mouth cancer, but I had no idea it was that serious. He was Ted Williams' favorite modern player, and (like Babe Ruth) is improperly remembered as a fat guy who couldn't run when that was only the way he was his last couple of years. While I realize its "part of the game" perhaps baseball will start looking into totally banning tobacco use on the field, because there is no reason for one of their greats to die so young because of something so useless.

Pretty sure they banned it years ago.

[Toxik916]

Jun 16, 2014 20:50:59 GMT -5 ToyfareMark said:

Jun 16, 2014 13:00:12 GMT -5 turkeysandwich said:

When I saw this thread I said "what". I knew he had mouth cancer, but I had no idea it was that serious. He was Ted Williams' favorite modern player, and (like Babe Ruth) is improperly remembered as a fat guy who couldn't run when that was only the way he was his last couple of years. While I realize its "part of the game" perhaps baseball will start looking into totally banning tobacco use on the field, because there is no reason for one of their greats to die so young because of something so useless.

Pretty sure they banned it years ago.

I don't believe they did. I know for a fact Pablo Sandoval still dips because his lip is packed full every at bat. Hopefully they do ban it because it sets a horrible example for the kids out there.

With that being said RIP Tony Gwynn. He was a great hitter and from all accounts a great man. I feel bad for San Diego, losing Junior Seau and now Tony Gwynn must be hard on that community. Those two were the faces of San Diego professional sports and now they're gone.

[Mac]

•Gwynn: 434 career strikeouts in 10,232 plate appearances

The pitcher he faced most in his MLB career was Greg Maddux. Maddux had over 3300 career strikeouts faced Tony Gwynn 101 times... never struck him out, walked him 11 times... Maddux had a career MLB walk to pitch ratio of 1.8%, it was over 10% against Gwynn.

He ate Braves pitching alive

[angryfan]

Jun 16, 2014 21:20:01 GMT -5 Mac said:

•Gwynn: 434 career strikeouts in 10,232 plate appearances

The pitcher he faced most in his MLB career was Greg Maddux. Maddux had over 3300 career strikeouts faced Tony Gwynn 101 times... never struck him out, walked him 11 times... Maddux had a career MLB walk to pitch ratio of 1.8%, it was over 10% against Gwynn.

He ate Braves pitching alive

Similarly, the pitcher with the most career strikeouts of Gwynn has that stat with a LOT of hitters. Nolan Ryan, he of nearly 6,000 strikeouts, managed to fan Tony Gwynn 9 times. Nine.

No pitcher struck him out more than that, which is rather frightening. In 1995, the entire year, he had 15 total strikeouts. Saw it mentioned in a column today, but the Upton brothers have that many strikeouts between them this week alone.

Gwynn, to me, was pure baseball. It wasn't flash, or overwhelming power, it wasn't speed. It was a man and a bat, and the ability to treat it and the ball as a yo-yo. If there was a hole, he found it, if there was a pitch in the pitcher's arsenal that Tony wanted, he made them throw it.

But it was practice, it was the innovation of the famed tape library, the study of every pitcher like a surgeon looking at an X-ray. By the time it came to operate, he knew what he wanted, he knew how to find it, and he knew what to do with it. What's more, he knew all nine guys on the field trying to stop them and what THEY would do.

As a kid, I loved to watch him hit, but I would become mesmerized by the flash, the power hitters, the guys throwing 100 mile an hour heaters, the guys swiping bases that were all cleats and dust. Yet I would always come back to the quiet guys, the ones who you would watch and say, "I know they're great, I just have no idea how because it's so ridiculously easy for them". Gwynn was like that, Maddux was like that.

Yet for both, when I read stories, I hear about studying, I hear about them keeping books on everyone, habits and behaviors, what a player will do in a certain count, or time of year, or what they did the last time they faced each other.

I also hear about recall of specific at bats or games strictly from memory, and I realize that what seemed so easy was more than that. It was art, it was an innate ability, and it was science.

I see a man like Ichiro, and I say he reminds me of Tony Gwynn. Not because they're "singles hitters", but because both have the ability to find the smallest hole in the defense, and then exploit it. Ichiro is great, but in the last few years his batting average and hits have decreased dramatically.

No shame, he is aging. But then I go back and I look at Gwynn's numbers and I realize the last piece of the puzzle. They didn't decline, at least not dramatically. His worse year in terms of batting average was .309. His final year? .324.

Last thing, as a right fielder with very bad knees, one would expect his range to be, shall we say, hampered. Yet he made a total of 62 errors in 20 years. If we look at baseball reference which has a fielding minimum of 500 career games, there are a total of 10 players in the history of Major League Baseball who have committed fewer errors in the outfield.

Ten.

Each of those ten players, incidentally, committed 61 career errors.

[Crappler El 0 M]

One of the best hitters from the time I watched MLB in the 1990s. Never was the most flashy, but was solid on the field and at the plate. Was pretty much a master at getting hits. He was a great base-stealer during the 1980s.