Background and career
Anthony Keith Gwynn Sr. (May 9, 1960 – June 16, 2014), nicknamed "Mr. Padre", was an American professional baseball right fielder who played 20 seasons (1982–2001) in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the San Diego Padres. The left-handed hitting Gwynn won eight batting titles in his career, which is tied for the most in National League (NL) history. He was a 15-time All-Star and won seven Silver Slugger Awards and five Gold Glove Awards. Gwynn stayed with the Padres his entire career and played in the only two World Series appearances in San Diego franchise history. Having hit over .300 for 19 straight seasons, Gwynn retired with a .338 career batting average, the highest mark since Ted Williams retired in 1960; Gwynn also holds the highest adjusted batting average of all time at .342. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007 in his first year of eligibility, and is widely considered the best pure hitter of his generation. Gwynn attended San Diego State University (SDSU), where he played both college baseball and basketball for the Aztecs. He was an all-conference player in both sports in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), and was also honored as an All-American in baseball. Gwynn was selected by the Padres in the third round of the 1981 MLB draft as the 58th overall pick. He made his major-league debut the next year and won his first batting title in 1984, when San Diego advanced to its first-ever World Series. Gwynn was a poor fielder in college and the minor leagues, but improved over time and received his first Gold Glove in 1986. The next year, he won the first of three consecutive batting titles. From 1990 to 1994, Gwynn endured four injury-shortened seasons, then had four straight batting titles starting in 1994, when he batted a career-high .394 in a strike-shortened season. Gwynn played in his second World Series in 1998 and reached the 3,000-hit milestone the following year. He played two more seasons, hampered by injuries in both, and retired after the 2001 season with 3,141 career hits. A contact hitter, Gwynn frequently hit the ball to the opposite field. After first meeting Hall of Famer Ted Williams in 1992, Gwynn modified his hitting approach and became more adept at pulling the ball and using the entire field, as well as hitting for more power. In his early career years, he was also a threat to steal bases. In an era before MLB teams used video for scouting, Gwynn pioneered the practice of recording and studying video to improve his hitting, for which he received the nickname "Captain Video". Widely considered the greatest player in Padres history, Gwynn regularly accepted less money to remain with the small-market team; he became a civic icon for the city of San Diego. During his later playing years and throughout retirement, Gwynn was an outspoken critic of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. After he retired from playing, the Padres retired his No. 19 in 2004. Gwynn became the head baseball coach at his alma mater university and also spent time as a baseball analyst. Gwynn developed a decades-long addiction to smokeless tobacco as a young adult, and was diagnosed with salivary gland cancer in 2010; Gwynn died of the cancer in 2014 at the age of 54. His death increased awareness regarding tobacco usage in MLB, leading to the 2016 league-wide ban on the substance for new players.
Gwynn was born in Los Angeles, California, to Charles and Vendella Gwynn, who originated from Gallatin, Tennessee. Charles excelled at sports, preferring football and baseball which he played in high school, and was also very passionate about history and politics; he spent the majority of his young adulthood in the 1950s serving in the U.S. Army. Vendella grew up in a large family and house upon several acres of land that functioned as a small farm; she was also athletically inclined, particularly in basketball and volleyball. The pair met and married in the mid-1950s. In 1958, Gwynn's older brother Charles Jr. was born and sometime thereafter, Charles was discharged from the Army. In 1959, Charles decided to move the family west from Tennessee under the belief that doing so would provide additional economic opportunity for a young black family.
The family's first residence in California was a two-bedroom apartment and they had one car, a Chrysler 300. Gwynn's favorite meals were Friday dinner because he'd get to eat fish, and any meals on Saturday and Sunday because that's when the whole family was together. Shortly after younger brother Chris was born in late 1964, the family moved to a larger apartment, a second-floor duplex that included a small grass backyard unlike the previous apartment. In the yard, Gwynn and Charles Jr. frequently played basketball games such as "Twenty-one" and "H-O-R-S-E" using a trash can against the building's back wall as the basket. Gwynn's "big thrill" was regularly going to the store to get RC Cola for his father using the latter's borrowed money. On one of these occasions when Gwynn returned from the store with the cola, he was also chewing a wad of gum; his father noticed this and asked Gwynn where the gum came from, and he confessed to shoplifting the gum. His father responded by taking Gwynn downstairs to a bush out in front of the apartment building, and pulling a switch from it to punish him with. Gwynn's favorite time of year was the annual summer family vacation to go visit his grandparents in Tennessee for six days, traveling in the family car. He personally liked his paternal grandparents more, but preferred to stay with his maternal grandparents because their residence (where his mother grew up) had acres of open land and a farm, which Gwynn said was "like a paradise". He gathered eggs from the chicken coop every morning and cooked breakfast with them, and also played baseball using black walnuts that had fallen. Through these visits, Gwynn grew an affinity for his grandmother Callie's Southern cooking. At age nine, Gwynn received a Sting-Ray bike with a banana seat from his parents coupled with the expectation that he was to use it to fetch groceries from the store. Gwynn refused to have a bicycle basket installed, insisting that it was only for "sissies", so he hauled groceries home using his arms. He was also allowed to use the bike for play; one time while doing so near the family's parked car, he crashed the bike into Chris who appeared out of nowhere. Chris bled from his face from hitting the cement, and had to be hospitalized with five stitches. Gwynn's parents initially threatened to whip Gwynn upon learning about the incident, but later changed their minds after discussing it with Chris, believing it was impossible for the boys to see each other before the crash. A few weeks after the bike crash, his parents decided they would move from their apartment and buy a house in nearby Long Beach, a location they chose because of its schools, parks, and youth sports options throughout the year. Gwynn joined a Little League team in Long Beach at the age of nine. When the coach asked him which position he wished to play, Gwynn indicated that he wanted to be the first baseman since he was left-handed, but the coach said that spot was occupied by a returning left-handed player, and instead offered the center fielder position to Gwynn. Gwynn's parents were civil servants and tag-team parents. Gwynn's father worked at a warehouse from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and he also coached Pop Warner football and Little League Baseball; his mother worked at the post office from 5:30 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. His mother and father instilled in him the value of being prepared. He played mostly basketball, then his favorite sport. Gwynn seldom played tennis, but readily defeated his older brother Charles Jr. (who regularly practiced the sport) when challenged. Gwynn's father encouraged his sons to play ball in the makeshift baseball field that he assembled in their backyard. The setup was a narrow strip of grass that was longer than it was wide. Pulling the ball too much resulted in it being lost over the neighbor's fence, but left field being short ruled out hitting it to the opposite field. Once the brothers' supply of wiffle balls was out, they resorted to using a sock rolled in rubber bands, a wad of tape, or a hardened fig from a neighbor's tree. Gwynn could pull the ball in his backyard, but he would naturally hit it the other way during regular games. Growing up, he attended Los Angeles Dodgers games and watched his hero, Willie Davis; the Dodgers outfielder had twice as many stolen bases as home runs (398 SB, 182 HR) in his career. Gwynn admired Davis for being black, left-handed, and "aggressive but under control"; he respected Davis' work habits as well. Unlike other kids who tracked home run hitters, Gwynn checked the box scores in the newspaper every morning to follow high-average hitters like Pete Rose, George Brett, and Rod Carew. By age thirteen, Gwynn had joined an adult baseball league.
Gwynn attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School, a high-profile sports school. In high school, Gwynn considered himself to be "kind of a nerd" and also shy, particularly with girls. His friends often attended parties with drugs and alcohol on Friday nights, but Gwynn abstained from such activities to avoid disappointing his parents and squandering future opportunities. Gwynn worked during the summers. One year, he got a job as a softball coach at Silverado Park after his name was chosen in a lottery drawing for the position; some of his responsibilities included managing the field, painting the foul lines, and picking up trash from the field. Another year, he was on a crew that painted athletic facilities in Long Beach public schools. Gwynn also played summer baseball for the Long Beach Jets (coached by 1964 Olympic high jumper John Rambo) in the Joe DiMaggio Summer League at Blair Field. Gwynn was the center fielder and his younger brother Chris was on the team. One year, Gwynn and the Jets won the local league and advanced to the state tournament in San Rafael of Northern California; they were defeated in the championship game. He was a two-sport star in basketball and baseball. In his final two years, his Jackrabbits baseball team was a combined 3–25–2 in the league, while his basketball team went a combined 53–6 and twice reached the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF)'s Southern Section 4A championship game. Gwynn had considered quitting baseball as a senior to concentrate on basketball, but his mother talked him out of it. "She said it might be something down the road and that I might be sorry later if I didn't play," recalled Gwynn.
As a junior, he was the starting point guard on Poly's basketball team, which went 30–1 and won the Southern Section 4A title that year. The final was played for more than 10,000 fans at the Long Beach Arena, where Gwynn scored 10 points in the 69–50 victory over Buena of Ventura. His teammates included Michael Wiley, who became a professional player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). In Gwynn's senior year, Poly was 23–7, and again advanced to the championship round, despite finishing third in the Moore League. Their bid for a second straight title ended with a 57–50 loss to Pasadena. Gwynn averaged 10.3 points and totaled 178 assists for the season, and he was named to the All-CIF Southern Section Second Team. After the season, he switched to baseball, which was already well underway for the year. Despite his shortened season, he earned first-team All-Southern Section honors after batting .563. Poly's baseball team's struggles taught him to remain focused, continue executing, and stay productive. Gwynn received scholarship offers to play college basketball but none for college baseball. He also went unselected in the 1977 MLB draft, which Gwynn attributed to his limited playing time. He wanted to play both sports for Cal State Fullerton, which was fine with basketball coach Bobby Dye, but baseball coach Augie Garrido did not believe that an athlete could handle both sports in college. San Diego State basketball coach Tim Vezie wanted Gwynn to commit to two years of basketball before playing baseball. Gwynn also had an offer from Texas Christian University (TCU), but he was told that he would be their first black player in 30 years, which ruled them out from his consideration. He chose to attend SDSU, calling it "the best option I had."
Gwynn was a two-sport star with San Diego State, playing three seasons of baseball and four of basketball. He was a recreation major. He was an All-American outfielder in his final two seasons, when he led the team in hitting. A skilled playmaker in basketball, he set multiple school records for assists. He was the first player in the history of the WAC to earn all-conference honors in basketball and baseball. Gwynn was not allowed to play baseball as a freshman. He was overweight at 205 pounds (93 kg), and Vezie wanted him to get in shape for the next basketball season. By the following season in 1979, Gwynn still had not heard from Aztecs baseball coach Jim Dietz about joining the team after the basketball season. However, an opportunity arose after two outfielders riding bicycles were struck by an automobile and injured, leaving Dietz in need of replacements. Freshman shortstop Bobby Meacham, who played against Gwynn in high school, convinced the coach to give Gwynn a chance. Dietz had never seen Gwynn play but contacted him mostly because he trusted Meacham. Vezie by then had been fired, and his successor, Smokey Gaines, allowed Gwynn to play baseball. Were it not for the accident, Gwynn doubted he would have ever played baseball with SDSU. "Knowing what I now do about Coach Dietz ... [h]e's too loyal to his athletes to have allowed me to walk over after basketball season and join the team," remarked Gwynn. In baseball, Gwynn was primarily a left fielder and designated hitter (DH) at San Diego State. He hit .301 in his first season but said he "stunk defensively." After his first season of baseball with the Aztecs, Gwynn played collegiate summer baseball for the Boulder Collegians while also enrolling in 10 transferable summer school units at the University of Colorado Boulder. During a game with the Collegians, he tripped while rounding first base trying to stretch a single into a double, and went down in pain having dislocated his ankle. Coach Jim Dietz chose to pop Gwynn's ankle back into place, because Dietz believed that having surgery done instead would've harmed Gwynn's chances of playing professional baseball; Gwynn was sent home for the remainder of the summer. In 1980, Gwynn hit .423 with six home runs and 29 runs batted in (RBI), and was named third-team All-American by Baseball News. The following season, he was a first-team All-American after batting .416 with 11 home runs and 62 RBI. He also was named a first-team All-WAC outfielder. In his three years, he had a career average of .398, and the team went 146–61–4. Playing basketball, Gwynn set Aztecs basketball records for assists in a game (18), season (221), and career (590), records that still remain unbeaten at SDSU. He was twice named to the All-WAC Second Team, and he averaged 8.8 points per game his senior year. Playing point guard developed Gwynn's baseball skills, as the dribbling strengthened his wrists—avoiding what he called "slow bat syndrome"—and basketball taught him to be quick, which improved his baserunning. He could dunk a basketball, though he was unable to palm the ball with his small hands. He had a quick first step in either sport and was able to run 60 yards (55 m) in 6.7 seconds. Gwynn indirectly received exposure from scouts who were interested in Meacham, who would become a first-round pick in 1981. Gwynn had started the baseball season late in 1981, as the basketball team was still competing, and some scouts had already seen enough of Meacham and stopped following SDSU. Also on the Aztecs baseball team was Casey McKeon, son of Jack McKeon, who was the San Diego Padres general manager at the time. Given his son's involvement, McKeon often went to Aztec games. He was initially interested in seeing Meacham but became more impressed by Gwynn after seeing him at an exhibition game between the Aztecs and Padres; Gwynn had re-joined the baseball team five days earlier.
