The Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance

A class act. RIP

Tony was a particular favorite of mine. I remember when he came up to the majors in 1983 with that fluid swing. Led the Padres to their surprising pennant in 1984 and then had season after season of batting titles (8 total), including that amazing season in 1994 when he chased .400 all year long, finishing at .394.

Since his retirement, he's been a civic leader in San Diego, donating time and money to children's causes. He will be missed sorely down here in the Southland.

Always one of my favorite players - and he wore #19, the number I wore for years. I bought one of his bats, autographed, at a Giants community fund auction and when I picked it up and swung it, I felt like I could hit .400!!! Such a great ambassador!!

Great hitter, greater person. Will be missed.

Apparently he was one of the first players to realize the value of watching video of themselves batting. On the radio today Ryne Sandberg recalled that Gwynn would have his own at-bats taped, at his own expense, long before teams did it for everyone. Sandberg said even he never studied his own tape, but Gwynn knew it would help. A great guy, a great athlete, and a trailblazer as well.

Mike Dunn wrote:Apparently he was one of the first players to realize the value of watching video of themselves batting.

That's true. Check out this video of Gwynn using a VCR to scout pitchers back in 1989. Truly a pioneer of the hitting art, and an all-around class guy. He will be missed.

I always kind of wondered what a team would look like if you put all of those high batting average guys together on the same team, something like:

Gwynn
Carew
Brett
Boggs
Madlock

Obviously, not all of their peaks line up perfectly, and you would have some positional problems trying to field a team since a lot of those guys played 3B, but man, that would be some fun stat lines to watch.

I once looked at the idea of what would happen if a team fielded nine hitters with a .350 OBP. My model said that you would be expected to bat around in one inning about once every other game. I then had an OOTP team that actually did that one year, and sure enough...that was pretty much right.