The Art of Hitting
Pictured: Tony Gwynn, during a Sporting News photo shoot with Stan Musial (foreground), 1997
I remember hearing that Tony Gwynn was ill. I think. He has been out of the baseball spotlight, privately battling cancer in his cheek, and it sounds as if he didn't have an easy go of it. He died early this morning after that four-year battle. The world's greatest Padre died an hour after Father's Day at the age of 54.
Tony Gwynn filled a definitive role in baseball during the 1980s and '90s. Base hit machine. The high-average guy, singles and doubles. Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby, Stan Musial, Pete Rose, George Brett, Wade Boggs. There's a lineage. He was that guy of his generation that might hit .400 this year. If anybody playing today can do it, it's Gwynn in San Diego. The older he grew, the heavier he got, which didn't seem to slow down his swing, and which made him even more likeable perhaps to the fans and the sportswriters, more relatable--you know, the way we all have this idea in our head that any average Joe could succeed in baseball, yet somehow almost 100% of us don't.
I came to appreciate Gwynn's extraordinary hitting talent in an usual way late in his career. With a baseball board game called APBA (American Professional Baseball Association), I replayed the 1987 National League season "on dice." I only recast the Cardinals games, but after each one, I would enter the statistics from the other five games as well from that date in N.L. history, sourcing the original box scores from back issues of The Sporting News. What did you do for fun in college?
Gwynn was the premiere hitter in the league, for my money, in '87. It was a year in which he batted .370 (incidentally, only the third-highest single-season mark of his career). He won his second of what would later be eight National League batting titles. Eight being one more than even Musial, a man to whom he has often been compared, in the batter's box and in life. Reviewing those numbers night-by-night, game-by-game, makes you appreciate how baseball differs from every other sport in the way that it rewards daily devotion. The numbers need time to compile. To simmer. A .338 lifetime batting average over 20 seasons and 9,288 at-bats is no joke. Tony could have kept playing beyond his last season, 2001, gone oh-for-his-next-1,182 and still finished above .300 for his career.
Major League Baseball doesn't have a player like Gwynn around anymore, a guy that you can count on to hit .350 in a good year, .315 in the down years-- never lower than that, and never striking out more than 40 times over the six-month marathon. For that, I blame the destruction of that figurative wall that separated the two leagues in style and substance for decades. The American League is still the American League, but now the National League is too. Middle infielders in both leagues swing for the porch and might strike out 150+ times over a summer. Tony had eight seasons-- six in a row-- in which he struck out fewer than 20 times. Ninety-seven active Major League hitters struck out 20 times-- last month!
In the day, it wasn't uncommon for a National League batter in the three hole to double fewer than 30 times in a year, triple 15 times, and knock fewer than ten out of the park. A fat guy with bad knees-- like Tony Gwynn-- might steal 30 bases. And these men I'm describing never once were penciled in at that prostitute and counterfeit field "position" known as the "designated hitter."
Tony's death makes me long for the 1980s. It was the best decade in baseball history during which to grow up. I'm convinced of that. There was extraordinary parity between teams. The World Series were epic, serving up Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson, Don Denkinger, Bill Buckner, and then Kirk Gibson again. The playoffs weren't watered down then, but they added to the drama, and the division alignment protected the pennant races. The best players were the best guys, the smartest guys, the most entertaining personalities-- Gwynn, Brett, Rose, Ricky Henderson, Robin Yount, Cal Ripken, Ryne Sandberg, Ozzie Smith. They were quite literally franchise-defining players.
Gwynn was that and more-- unquestionably he is "Mr. Padre" to this day. "Mr. San Diego," even. He played for the team during both of its World Series appearances, 14 years apart. Combined, the Padres lost eight of the nine Series games, but Gwynn hit .371 for those nine games. Naturally.
He registered 94 career at-bats against that other historical curiosity of his generation, Greg Maddux, and racked up 39 hits against him. That's a .415 clip. Maddux struck out 3,371 batters during his career. Tony Gwynn wasn't one of them. Not in 107 plate appearances. Maddux only faced eight batters in his career more often than he faced Gwynn.
Maddux joins Gwynn in the National Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. Upon the announcement of such back in January, Maddux posited that his success on the pitcher's mound was based on the premise that each hitter can be tricked by the speed of a pitch. "Helpless," he explained of them, "limited by human vision... except for that fucking Tony Gwynn."
posted by CM @ 9:21 PM
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