Gwynn’s legacy a mix of skill, grit and spit
With today’s passing of baseball legend Tony Gwynn, there will likely be countless statistics tossed in with the numerous appropriately warm encomia. Eight-time batting champ, five-time Gold Glove winner, 3,141 career hits, first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee, 19 straight seasons batting over .300 — Gwynn is the hands-down leader in practically every non-slugging batting statistic in San Diego Padres history, and would be able to claim the same had he played for any of a dozen other major league teams.
But there are going to be a few statistics that stand out as testaments to his skill, his dedication, and his greatness that are peculiarly intertwined with his time.
Tony Gwynn’s career batting average of .338 tops any player who retired after 1939. In 1994, Gwynn came closer to hitting over .400 than any player since Tony Gwynn’s idol, Boston outfielder Ted Williams, last did it in 1941. Gwynn was hitting a cool .394 in August when a labor dispute interrupted the season with 40-odd games remaining. With the vaunted batting threshold within his reach so close to the end of the year, few observers in or out of the game at the time doubted Gwynn’s ability to make up those six points.
The strike that season was preceded by years in which baseball owners had been discovered colluding to keep player salaries artificially low. One of the owners at the center of that scandal was Milwaukee’s Bud Selig. When Selig was named acting commissioner of baseball (the owners had forced out the previous commissioner, Fay Vincent, for his intervention in a previous labor dispute) the same week the owners proposed a salary cap without any true revenue sharing plan (a system that could have effectively disabled modern free-agency), the stage was set for what turned into the longest work stoppage in baseball history. (Interesting footnote, the strike and ensuing lockout only ended the next spring when a U.S. District Court judge named Sonia Sotomayor ruled in favor of the National Labor Relations Board, finding that the owners had engaged in unfair labor practices.)
To say a state of war existed between players and owners would not be too far off the mark (minus maybe, you know, the killing parts). But Gwynn, who played for small-market San Diego, and likely suffered a lower salary, less notoriety and perhaps fewer post-season appearances because of it, never had a dispute with Padres ownership big enough to even graze the issue of free agency. For better or worse, Gwynn was loyal to his native San Diego — he played his entire 20-year career for the Padres, an almost unheard of tenure for a player of his star status.
Gwynn likely missed out on millions of dollars in additional salary, but what he rarely missed during his career (and yes, this is a terrible segue) was a pitch. For his entire career, Gwynn struck out a total of 434 times. In just the last two-and-a-half seasons, Adam Dunn — now of the Chicago White Sox and one of baseball’s leading power hitters over his 14-year career — has struck out 486 times.
Yes, the two men are dramatically different types of hitters — though it should be noted that in 1997, when Gwynn made a point of hitting for more power, he still batted .372 and struck out only 28 times — but the lifelong Padre was a different type of hitter from most in the game today. Gwynn’s approach to an at bat was something often touted but rarely seen anymore — in that Gwynn had an approach to an at bat.
The pitch count and the game situation should dictate when and how a hitter swings, and what he should be looking for. In its remembrance, the San Diego Union-Tribune relays a story from teammate Tim Flannery about Gwynn predicting the first pitch he’d see in an at bat postponed overnight by a rain delay.
Tony and I are walking back up the tunnel at Riverfront [Stadium in Cincinnati]. He said, ‘Hey, Flan, I want you to be ready tomorrow, because this guy’s gonna throw me a first-pitch slider, I’m gonna hit it into the left-center gap, it’s gonna score two and we’re gonna be tied.’
Sure enough, next day, first-pitch-slider, boom, left-center field, both runners score, tie game. Tony looks at me and smiles. I’ll guarantee you this: Before he went to bed that night, that lefty didn’t know he was gonna throw that. But Tony knew.
Gwynn was not the same batter in the seventh inning that he was in the first. He was a different hitter with one ball than he was with two strikes. An at bat in a tie game was not the same as one where the Padres were down two runs. Gwynn would always adapt to the situation. His ability to factor in change made him consistently successful.
And here’s another terrible segue:
For all the great statistics on which Gwynn came out on the winning end, here is one he didn’t: 1 in 100,000.
Salivary cancer, the disease that led to Gwynn’s untimely death (he was only 54) is quite rare — only 1 case per 100,000 people per year. And even there, most cases show up in people much older than Gwynn.
Gwynn blamed his cancer on his lifelong use of “smokeless” tobacco — also known as spit tobacco, chewing tobacco or chaw.
Gwynn began “dipping” early in his baseball life (chaw in baseball is as old as the game and is still an absurdly common practice among some major league ballplayers), and he continued to do so even after he retired … and he always placed the tobacco in his right cheek. All the major tumors Gwynn had removed in recent years were on the right side of his mouth.
Medical science will never say there is a one-to-one causal link, but Gwynn couldn’t have been surer. “Of course it caused it,” Gwynn said in an interview a few years back, “I always dipped on my right side.”
But in this case, Gwynn’s knowledge didn’t give him the winning edge. Gwynn started having precancerous lesions removed from his mouth while he was still a player. Even after his first cancer treatments, some have reported that Gwynn would nevertheless occasionally partake of a pinch.
How could a man so smart about hitting be so stupid about his health? Ask most tobacco smokers about how hard it is to quit — then multiply it.
All tobacco delivers nicotine, and chewing tobacco does a much better job of it than cigarettes. The amount of nicotine absorbed from chaw is three- or four-times greater than from smoking. More nicotine is absorbed per dose, and it stays in the bloodstream longer. Trying to quit smokeless tobacco produces all of the same physiological and psychological symptoms as quitting smoking, but depending on the size of the habit, often more so.
Worse, too, for the broader society, while cigarette use is in decline, chewing tobacco sales continue to grow, tripling in a generation. And while the use of chewing tobacco has finally been banned from on-the-field use in NCAA and minor league baseball, no such prohibition exists at the major league level.
That unfortunate split exists, in part, because owners had in the past been unwilling to give up possible in-stadium advertising revenue, and, in part, because of a persistent reluctance from the MLB Player’s Union to give management another opening to regulate player behavior that has the potential to extend beyond on-field performance. Given the history of owners angling to restrict player movement and constrain salaries, perhaps there are grounds for some suspicion — but since the severe tumult of the mid-‘90s, baseball has enjoyed a surprisingly long era of labor calm.
Could the death of a previous era’s greatest hitter provide the opportunity for today’s game to grow past that distrust? A new labor agreement will be up for negotiation in 2016, and with it, a chance to reexamine baseball’s spit-covered legacy. Given the situation, given the loss of one of baseball’s greatest hitters (and, more recently, one of hitting’s greatest teachers), perhaps it is time for owners and players to adapt.
Error
Sorry, your comment was not saved due to a technical problem. Please try again later or using a different browser.