Tony Gwynn dead at 54
- Thread starter Jait
- Start date
Fuck cancer. I posted this in the MLB thread so I'll just c/p here. Today sucks.
Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn of San Diego Padres died - ESPN
Fuck. Usually celebrity/athlete deaths don't really get to me, but this one does. He was my hero growing up, and really the only true San Diego sports icon. Sad day.
Edit: Seriously he's the only player in any sport that I can think of that everyone I knew growing up loved. Even non sports fans (his image was very prevalent in San Diego in the 80's/90's) loved him. 8 batting titles, .338 average, 5 gold gloves (he used to be fit!) and 19 straight seasons over .300. Legendary.
Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn of San Diego Padres died - ESPN
Fuck. Usually celebrity/athlete deaths don't really get to me, but this one does. He was my hero growing up, and really the only true San Diego sports icon. Sad day.
Edit: Seriously he's the only player in any sport that I can think of that everyone I knew growing up loved. Even non sports fans (his image was very prevalent in San Diego in the 80's/90's) loved him. 8 batting titles, .338 average, 5 gold gloves (he used to be fit!) and 19 straight seasons over .300. Legendary.
Jait
Molten Core Raider
- 5,035
- 5,317
Didn't see your post, but the fucker definitely deserves his own thread.
I was a Mets fan growing up. I loved Hernandez, Carter, etc... But there was no way to avoid admiring Gwynn. He is simply the best hitter in the last 50 years, no one comes close. His stats alone prove that, but any avid fan of baseball knows he hit .350+ against the best pitchers in baseball. When asked who he thought was the hardest pitcher to hit, he said "Greg Maddux". Then he was told he hit something like .380 against Maddux over his career.
I was a Mets fan growing up. I loved Hernandez, Carter, etc... But there was no way to avoid admiring Gwynn. He is simply the best hitter in the last 50 years, no one comes close. His stats alone prove that, but any avid fan of baseball knows he hit .350+ against the best pitchers in baseball. When asked who he thought was the hardest pitcher to hit, he said "Greg Maddux". Then he was told he hit something like .380 against Maddux over his career.
Yeah I won't be merging this thread or anything, lol.
What you said plays to my point. San Diego, at least when I was growing up, was full of transplants from other parts of the country (there were very few of us "natives") so for every Padres fan there was a Cubs/Yankees/Mets/whatever fan. Everyone loved Tony.
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
Tony Gwynn, Kirby Puckett, and George Brett were my 3 favorite players as a kid. Loved the guys that were just pure, talented hitters.
Never got to see Tony Gwynn play near as much as the other 2, living in an AL city, but loved seeing him each year in the All Star game at the very least.
Never got to see Tony Gwynn play near as much as the other 2, living in an AL city, but loved seeing him each year in the All Star game at the very least.
Fuck, I totally forgot he was battling cancer. Dude was a huge baseball figure growing up in the 80's and 90's and seemed like a great person overall. Him, Brett, Mattingly, Ripken, Trammel, and Boggs are the guys I always remember from that era before dudes started getting juiced. Back when a 20-30HR dude was hitting 3'rd or 4'th.
I figured something was going on when I saw he was trending in Baltimore, but I was still shocked to read that he had died. I didn't have a chance to see him often while he was playing (mainly nightly highlights and All-Star games), but he was still one of my favorites. Such a shame to lose him so young.
I saw an interesting stat come across Twitter this afternoon: During the 2009-10 seasons, Mark Reynolds struck out a combined 434 times. During his entire career, spanning 20 seasons and more than 10,000 at-bats, Gwynn struck out atotalof 434 times. Incredible.
RIP, Tony.
I saw an interesting stat come across Twitter this afternoon: During the 2009-10 seasons, Mark Reynolds struck out a combined 434 times. During his entire career, spanning 20 seasons and more than 10,000 at-bats, Gwynn struck out atotalof 434 times. Incredible.
RIP, Tony.
- 1,031
- 1,410
My dad was huge on baseball and I caught the love for it also when I was younger so I loved getting drug around to card shows and celebrity golf tournaments in order to meet all of these guys. Gwynn was my favorite player by far as a kid. No showboating, he was just the best at what he did. The first time that I ever got to meet him was at a card show where he was three tables down from Strawberry, McGwire and the big rookie from that year. McGwire was always really nice to us since he was giving the D to my dad's secretary every year during spring training so I'd met him a few times before, Strawberry was the biggest asshole imaginable and the rookie somehow one upped him. Gwynn was just flat out class, guy even said thank you to me for getting his autograph that day. By the third time that I met him he knew me and my dad's names and would even bring up small things that we'd talked about the time before. There are four people that I will remember forever that are famous athletes; Gordie Howe hit me in the head with a hockey stick twice doing a Three Stooges routine, Gretzky was the absolute nicest sports legend that I've ever met, DiMaggio was a dick to everyone that I knew but it was fucking DiMaggio so it was great to meet the guy but Gwynn is still my favorite. My dad wrote to me this morning that he died, really sad day. Guy was an amazing player and just all around a good person from what i gleaned from my interactions. Really sad to lose athletes like him, fuck cancer.
Jait
Molten Core Raider
- 5,035
- 5,317
Yeah, I mentioned it in my previous post but couldn't remember the exact figures. Insane. It was in an interview with The Sporting News back in the day. Gwynn said Maddux was the toughest pitcher he ever faced then he was told what his average was against Maddux and still stood by his statement. When you battle against arguably the most intelligent pitcher to ever throw a ball in the game and hit .415, you deserve to be talked about in the same conversation with folks like Williams and Cobb, etc..
Yeah, he had 1 3 strikeout game in his entire 20 year career. That's fucking insane.
I was thinking about all of the times I watched him play today. We had season tickets from about 1988 until 2005 or 2006 (I had moved from San Diego in 2004 so I can't remember), so probably well over 100 times. From the time I was in elementary school until after I had joined the Army he was there playing, and he was the star. That's a significant chunk of my life.
Standout memories are from the final game in 1989 when he was battling Will Clark for the batting title. I think Clark was a point or two ahead going into the game. Every time Clark came up to bat there was 30k+ people booing, and every time Tony did anything the crowd went nuts. Tony ended up winning. Also anything from the pennant winning 1998 team. Seeing him blast a HR in Yankee stadium in game 1 was fucking amazing (I was watching on TV, of course).
I was thinking about all of the times I watched him play today. We had season tickets from about 1988 until 2005 or 2006 (I had moved from San Diego in 2004 so I can't remember), so probably well over 100 times. From the time I was in elementary school until after I had joined the Army he was there playing, and he was the star. That's a significant chunk of my life.
Standout memories are from the final game in 1989 when he was battling Will Clark for the batting title. I think Clark was a point or two ahead going into the game. Every time Clark came up to bat there was 30k+ people booing, and every time Tony did anything the crowd went nuts. Tony ended up winning. Also anything from the pennant winning 1998 team. Seeing him blast a HR in Yankee stadium in game 1 was fucking amazing (I was watching on TV, of course).
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
5 best pure hitters I've seen in my lifetime(I'm 36, can remember watching baseball starting around 1983/84ish) is Tony Gwynn, George Brett, Kirby Puckett, Wade Boggs, and Miguel Cabrera(but we'll see if his entire career holds up to the pace he's currently setting).
He may do like Brett, and hold on a little too long and hurt his career average. After Brett won his 3rd batting title in 1990 at the age of 37, he hit .255, .285, .266 in his last 3 years, drug down his career average pretty good.
He may do like Brett, and hold on a little too long and hurt his career average. After Brett won his 3rd batting title in 1990 at the age of 37, he hit .255, .285, .266 in his last 3 years, drug down his career average pretty good.
A nice compilation of stats fromMLB - The late Tony Gwynn's incredible hitting numbers - ESPN
. Gwynn hit .338 over a 20-year career. No one else whose career started after World War II has even gotten closer than 10 points of him -- at least no one with 5,000 plate appearances or more.
. In the 14 seasons from 1984 through 1997, Gwynn finished in the top five in the batting race 13 times. And in the only season he didn't -- in 1990 -- he missed by one hit.
. He had three different seasons in which he hit .370 or higher. In the 73 years since Ted Williams last hit .400, all the other hitters who passed through the big leagues -- a group that includes Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Wade Boggs, yadda, yadda, yadda -- combined to do it only eight times.
. No hitter born after 1900 reached 3,000 hits in fewer games (2,284) or at-bats (8,874) than Gwynn. In the history of baseball, only Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie got there faster -- and when they played, the gloves were made of the same material as those trains they rode on.
. No 3,000-hit man who was born after 1900 had a higher lifetime batting average than Gwynn (.338). In fact, according to the Elias Sports Bureau's Steve Hirdt, no hitter born since 1918 (i.e., since Ted Williams) has even gotten 2,000 hits and had an average this high.
. No hitter who has played his entire career since the invention of the designated hitter has accumulated as many hits as Gwynn (3,141) without spending a large portion of his career in the American League. But Gwynn got every one of his hits in the National League. And he was proud of that.
. Gwynn had six straight seasons (and eight altogether) in which he struck out fewer than 20 times. Did you know there were 97 hitters in the big leagues who whiffed at least 20 times just last month?
. Finally, what does it mean to have piled up a .338 batting average over a 20-year career, over 9,288 at-bats? It means Tony Gwynn would have had to go 0-for-his-next-1,183 to get his average to fall under .300 (and even then, it would have "plummeted" to a mere .29997). We kid you not.
OK, got all that digested. Here comes more.
. Gwynn got hits off Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton and Phil Niekro -- four men who won a combined 1,282 games.
. He hit .400 or better against eight different Cy Young winners -- Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Bret Saberhagen, Vida Blue, John Denny, Dennis Eckersley, Mark Davis and Doug Drabek -- and batted at least .300 against seven more.
. He racked up 39 hits off Maddux (39-for-94, .415), 32 against Smoltz (32-for-72, .444) and 30 against Tom Glavine (30-for-99, .303).
. And none of these pitchers ever struck him out: Pedro Martinez (35 AB), Hideo Nomo (25 AB), Mike Hampton (33 AB) or, incredibly, Maddux (in 94 AB).
. In the 14 seasons from 1984 through 1997, Gwynn finished in the top five in the batting race 13 times. And in the only season he didn't -- in 1990 -- he missed by one hit.
. He had three different seasons in which he hit .370 or higher. In the 73 years since Ted Williams last hit .400, all the other hitters who passed through the big leagues -- a group that includes Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Wade Boggs, yadda, yadda, yadda -- combined to do it only eight times.
. No hitter born after 1900 reached 3,000 hits in fewer games (2,284) or at-bats (8,874) than Gwynn. In the history of baseball, only Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie got there faster -- and when they played, the gloves were made of the same material as those trains they rode on.
. No 3,000-hit man who was born after 1900 had a higher lifetime batting average than Gwynn (.338). In fact, according to the Elias Sports Bureau's Steve Hirdt, no hitter born since 1918 (i.e., since Ted Williams) has even gotten 2,000 hits and had an average this high.
. No hitter who has played his entire career since the invention of the designated hitter has accumulated as many hits as Gwynn (3,141) without spending a large portion of his career in the American League. But Gwynn got every one of his hits in the National League. And he was proud of that.
. Gwynn had six straight seasons (and eight altogether) in which he struck out fewer than 20 times. Did you know there were 97 hitters in the big leagues who whiffed at least 20 times just last month?
. Finally, what does it mean to have piled up a .338 batting average over a 20-year career, over 9,288 at-bats? It means Tony Gwynn would have had to go 0-for-his-next-1,183 to get his average to fall under .300 (and even then, it would have "plummeted" to a mere .29997). We kid you not.
OK, got all that digested. Here comes more.
. Gwynn got hits off Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton and Phil Niekro -- four men who won a combined 1,282 games.
. He hit .400 or better against eight different Cy Young winners -- Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Bret Saberhagen, Vida Blue, John Denny, Dennis Eckersley, Mark Davis and Doug Drabek -- and batted at least .300 against seven more.
. He racked up 39 hits off Maddux (39-for-94, .415), 32 against Smoltz (32-for-72, .444) and 30 against Tom Glavine (30-for-99, .303).
. And none of these pitchers ever struck him out: Pedro Martinez (35 AB), Hideo Nomo (25 AB), Mike Hampton (33 AB) or, incredibly, Maddux (in 94 AB).
