100 Things Padres Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
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100 Things Padres Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781633194922 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2016 |
| Series: | 100 Things...Fans Should Know Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
100 Things Padres Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
By Kirk Kenney
Triumph Books LLC
Copyright © 2016 Kirk KenneyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63319-492-2
CHAPTER 1
Tony Gwynn
On the first day of the 1981 Major League Baseball draft, Tony Gwynn was sitting by the telephone waiting for it to ring.
And it did.
"A secretary called," Gwynn said, "and didn't tell me who she was calling from, just that she needed my middle name."
"Keith," he told her.
When the phone rang a second time, five minutes later, that same secretary revealed a little more. He had been drafted by San Diego.
"I remember the first words out of my mouth were, 'Aw, (bleep),'" Gwynn said. "The Padres. That damn brown and gold.
"But I sat there with my brother and started thinking about it and I said, 'You know, they're letting a lot of young players play there.' I thought I might move up real quickly."
Thirteen months later — on July 19, 1982 — Gwynn was in San Diego making his major league debut.
So began the career of the greatest player in Padres history — and the most beloved citizen of San Diego.
Gwynn got the first two hits of his career that night against the Philadelphia Phillies. Who knew there were 3,139 more hits where those came from?
"I was like most young guys," Gwynn said. "I came up and wanted to establish myself in the big leagues. ... I think I developed because I was a workaholic as far as this game is concerned. I've tried to do everything I can to get better."
Gwynn's .338 career batting average — which ranks 22 all-time — is the highest in the majors since Ted Williams hit .344.
Gwynn's eight National League batting titles equaled the mark set by Honus Wagner. Only Ty Cobb won more.
Gwynn's 3,141 career hits ranked 17 on the all-time list when he retired.
Gwynn had the distinction of playing all of his 20 seasons in a Padres uniform. When he retired he was only the 17th player in history to have played 20 or more seasons all with the same team.
It easily could never have happened.
When Gwynn went off to college, he was not yet on a path that would lead to the major leagues and, eventually, the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Gwynn, who was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Long Beach, originally came to San Diego on a scholarship to play basketball.
Gwynn was SDSU's point guard. He would hold game (18), season (221), and career (590) assist records by the time his career was over. Those records still stand.
Gwynn didn't want to limit himself to basketball, but that's what he was asked to do his freshman year at State.
"The basketball coach [Tim Vezie] asked me to focus on basketball," Gwynn said. "What could I really do? So that first year I just sat on Raggers' Rail (just beyond the right-field fence at the baseball field) and watched them play."
Along comes Bobby Meacham on his recruiting visit to San Diego State. Meacham, a shortstop from Santa Ana's Mater Dei and one of the nation's prize recruits, was sitting in SDSU baseball coach Jim Dietz's office when Gwynn poked his head in the door, said hello, and continued on his way.
"Coach, I didn't know he was playing here," said Meacham.
"No, he's on the basketball team," Dietz said. "Does he play baseball, too?"
Basketball? Meacham knew Gwynn only as a baseball player from Long Beach Poly High.
"In high school, he was a great hitter, a guy who could fly around the bases, could steal a base, a great center fielder," said Meacham, who got to know Gwynn when they played summer league baseball in Long Beach. "I thought he was the best player I ever played against."
And someone Meacham desperately wanted to play with.
"I thought, This is crazy. He's got to play baseball, " said Meacham.
Gwynn had met Dietz briefly when Gwynn visited the campus before making his commitment. But, again, he was there on a basketball scholarship. He was a walk-on in baseball. And that was a year after their brief encounter.
"They had 80 or 90 walk-ons a year in baseball and here comes this guy out of basketball trying to play baseball," Gwynn said.
But Gwynn had someone on the inside putting in a good word for him.
"If Bobby doesn't say anything, I probably don't even play baseball," said Gwynn. "Bobby told Coach Dietz, 'You've got a hell of a baseball player on the basketball team.'
"Bobby was Dietz's prize recruit. Meach could have gone anywhere in the country and decided to go to San Diego State. Lucky for me. I eventually proved my worth."
It may not have been evident initially. Gwynn batted .301 his first season. He had one home run and 11 RBIs in 34 games as he removed the cobwebs from his swing. He came around the second year, leading the team in batting at .423 with six homers and 29 RBIs in 41 games.
Then there was his third year. What a season. Gwynn batted .416 with 11 homers and 62 RBIs in 52 games.
The statistics weren't what garnered Gwynn attention, however. Once again, he thanked Meacham for that.
"All the scouts came to our games to see him, not me," Gwynn said.
Meacham was selected in the first round, the eighth pick overall, by the St. Louis Cardinals. After a trade, he would play six years in the majors with the New York Yankees.
"I still chuckle when I think that we went in the same draft and I went so much higher than him," Meacham said. "The Cardinals picked the wrong guy from San Diego State."
The Padres selected Gwynn in the third round with the draft's 58overall pick. Before the day was over, he had been drafted again — in the 10th round of the NBA draft by the San Diego Clippers.
There was a time when Gwynn considered basketball his sport.
"Baseball was just something to do in the spring and summer," Gwynn once said. "I told my mom I didn't think I would try baseball in college. She and my dad told me it was something I might want to fall back on."
Baseball turned out to be a good Plan B, and Gwynn set off on a whirlwind tour of the minor leagues.
In the summer of 1981, Gwynn won a Class-A batting title in the Northwest League by hitting .331 at Walla Walla, Washington. He was promoted to Double-A Amarillo (Texas) for the last three weeks of the season and hit .462 in 23 games. Gwynn opened the 1982 season at Triple-A Honolulu and batted .328 in 93 games before being called up by the Padres.
Gwynn batted .289 during his rookie season in San Diego. He was two hits shy of batting .300. Gwynn hit better than .300 each of the following 19 seasons.
He stumbled onto something early that would be an asset throughout his career. Sometimes inspiration comes from desperation.
Gwynn was concerned about his swing during a slump midway through the 1983 season that dropped his average as low as .229. That led to his pioneering use of videotape to review at-bats and search for flaws in his swing.
"We were on the road and I saw the game was going to be telecast back to San Diego," Gwynn recalled. "My wife and I had just gotten some video-recording equipment for our television.
"So I called Alicia and asked her to tape that night's game for me. We were headed home, and I wanted to see if I could spot something wrong with my swing."
Gwynn did identify an issue, corrected it, and was on his way again.
"(Video) was so basic when I started," Gwynn said. "I was at the mercy of what they showed on the television. If the TV cameras caught a shot of me swinging, I had a piece of tape to work with. If they didn't, I didn't, and it was back to the drawing board."
Gwynn gives much of the credit to his wife.
"She was taking care of the baby (son Tony Jr.) and running to the tape machine when I hit. I'm sure she wasn't happy with the program at times. But she helped turn my career around. We were a team."
Gwynn batted .333 over the final two months of the season. It included a 25-game hitting streak, which would be the best of his career.
Gwynn's five Gold Gloves didn't set any records, but in some ways were an even greater accomplishment than his hitting.
The knock on Gwynn when he reached the majors was that he was not a good defensive outfielder. John Boggs, Gwynn's longtime agent and friend, had the pleasure of giving Gwynn the good news when the right fielder won his first Gold Glove in 1986.
"He was on a trip," Boggs said. "When I finally reached him, he sounded terrible."
'Tony, what's wrong?' Boggs said.
"I'm sick," Gwynn replied.
"Hopefully, I have something that will make you feel better," Boggs said. "I just got the news that you won your first Gold Glove.
"And he went nuts. He started yelling and screaming, from his death bed, it sounded like, to the most euphoric I've ever heard him."
"Tony, what's going on?" Boggs asked.
"I'm jumping up and down on the bed and pumping my fist," Gwynn said. "That's great news."
Said Boggs: "I've never heard him that excited about something, which told you how hard he worked at it and accomplished it. Tony knew he needed to improve defensively, and he worked on that just like he worked on everything in life. He really paid special attention to the defensive component of his game."
Even when the Gold Gloves started coming, Gwynn would forever be known by the way he swung the bat.
"Tony Gwynn is the Picasso of modern-day hitters," Ted Williams once said. "Nobody studies the game harder, pays more attention to detail and goes to the plate with a better idea of what he wants to do."
But it was much more than Gwynn's prowess at the plate that endeared him to San Diego.
It was showing loyalty to stay with the Padres when he could have made more money elsewhere. It was his good works in the community. It was a friendly, outgoing personality when dealing with the fans. It was returning to his alma mater when his career ended and becoming head coach of the baseball team.
"As far as San Diego, he was a consistent sign of stability," Tony Gwynn Jr. said of his father. "When it comes to sports or when you think of the city of San Diego, a lot of people think of my father. Because he was here for so long and everything he did professionally involved the city of San Diego. Everything he did in his life involved the city of San Diego."
Every person who watched Gwynn play right field for the Padres for 20 years felt like they knew him. Seemingly everyone met him at one time or another, at an autograph signing, at the store or the gas station.
And Gwynn could meet someone for 20 minutes and you would think they had been friends for 20 years.
Informed once that his autograph on a baseball was selling for more than $100, Gwynn was dumbfounded.
"How could it be worth anything?" he asked. "I've signed for everyone."
Then he laughed that incredible laugh of his.
When you read about those who played the game, some nearly a century ago now, guys like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson and Williams, their accomplishments seem almost mythical. Generations to come will view Gwynn in the same regard.
His most amazing season, when he batted .394 in 1994 before the strike wiped out the last six weeks of the season, he had the highest average since Williams batted .406 in 1941.
It goes far beyond what Gwynn did with a bat and glove. That much was evident when about 25,000 people showed up to pay their respects at Petco Park for a memorial service after Gwynn died of cancer in 2014 at the age of 54.
"He will in some sense be a mythical icon in a lot of kids' minds because they will have never seen him up close and in person," Gwynn Jr. said, "but they will have many, many stories to tell about him....
"Ultimately, his legacy will be who he was as a man and how he treated people. I try to live my life the same way he did as far as his interaction with people that weren't family. I think he genuinely felt that anybody he came across he wanted to treat them as such, as family."
Cooperstown had a family atmosphere in 2007 when Gwynn (97.6 percent of votes) and Baltimore's Cal Ripken (98.5) were enshrined at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A crowd estimated at 82,000 — the largest ever for Hall of Fame Induction Weekend — showed up to honor the players.
At one point during his induction speech, Gwynn said: "I worked hard in the game because I had to. I wasn't talented enough to just get by on a billing. I really had to work at it. I had to do the video stuff. I had the extra hit(ting). I had to go about my business and do things the way I did. I think people, we make a big deal about work ethic.
"We make a big deal about trying to make good decisions and doing things right, and you know what, we are supposed to. That is what they pay us for. ... I'm a big believer when you sign your name on a dotted line, there's more than just playing the game of baseball. I think if you look out here today, you see all these people out here today, they love the game, too. And there's a responsibility when you put that uniform on that those people, the people who pay to go watch you play, you're responsible, you've got to make good decisions and show people how things are supposed to be done."
A quarter century had passed since that day Gwynn had been drafted by the Padres. The "brown and gold" had changed to blue and orange by the time he was done playing. Either way, that franchise and that city had come to mean the world to Gwynn.
"I'm proud as heck to be a San Diego Padre," he said. "I played for one team. I played in one town. I told the people of San Diego when I left to come to Cooperstown, they were going to be standing up here with me, so I hope they are just as nervous as I am, because this is a tremendous honor to be here today."
A 91/2-foot statue of Gwynn in Petco's Park at the Park was unveiled a week before Gwynn's induction at Cooperstown.
Gwynn walked completely around the statue, admiring the work of the sculptor. He had captured the hitter in midswing.
The inscription on the front reads: Tony Gwynn, Mr. Padre.
On the back is a quote from Gwynn's father Charles: "If you work hard, good things will happen."
Isn't that the truth.
CHAPTER 2Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc was reading the sports pages one day when he came across a story about the Padres being for sale.
My God, Kroc thought. San Diego is a gorgeous place. Why don't I go over there and look at that ballpark?
Kroc's interest was sufficiently sparked that he told wife Joan, "I'm thinking of buying the Padres."
"Why would you want to buy a monastery?" she replied.
Joan didn't know much about baseball.
Of course, baseball didn't know much about the Krocs, either.
The McDonald's magnate had already sold more than a billion burgers by the time he turned to baseball.
That was news to Padres president Buzzie Bavasi, who had never eaten at the restaurant.
When Kroc's lawyer, Don Lubin, first contacted the Padres to inform them of Kroc's interest, Bavasi seemed unimpressed.
"That's fine," Bavasi said. "Who else is in the group?"
"He is the group," came the reply.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 100 Things Padres Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Kirk Kenney. Copyright © 2016 Kirk Kenney. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Randy Jones,Acknowledgments,
1. Tony Gwynn,
2. Ray Kroc,
3. Jerry Coleman,
4. 1984 World Series Team,
5. Garvey's Homer,
6. Garvey's Number,
7. 1998 World Series Team,
8. C. Arnholdt Smith,
9. Hoffman in the 9th,
10. The Chicken,
11. Tim Flannery,
12. The Wizard of Oz,
13. Tempy,
14. .394,
15. Bruce Bochy,
16. John Moores and Larry Lucchino,
17. Back-to-Back-to-Back,
18. Tony Talks with Ted,
19. Tony's Number,
20. Mr. Indispensable — Whitey Wietelmann,
21. Ken Caminiti,
22. Randy Jones Wins the 1976 Cy Young Award,
23. Yo, Adrian,
24. 1978 All-Star Game,
25. 1992 All-Star Game,
26. Ollie Brown — the Original Padre,
27. Petco Park,
28. Get a Foul Ball at Petco,
29. San Diego Stadium,
30. Buzzie Bavasi,
31. Dave Winfield,
32. Trader Jack McKeon,
33. Dick Williams,
34. Rollie Fingers,
35. Randy Jones,
36. Gaylord Perry,
37. Yuma,
38. Visit Peoria for Spring Training,
39. Visit Cooperstown,
40. The Crowd in Cooperstown,
41. Jones vs. Kaat,
42. Preston Gomez,
43. Gwynn's World Series Homer off David Wells,
44. Jake Peavy,
45. Catfish Gets off the Hook,
46. Draft Flops,
47. Chris Gwynn's Big Hit,
48. Mark Davis,
49. A.J. Preller's 36-Hour Makeover,
50. The Fire Sale,
51. Trevor Hoffman,
52. Sounding "Hells Bells",
53. Trevor's 500th Save,
54. Atta Baby!,
55. The 5.5 Hole,
56. Prop C Gets an Aye,
57. Benito's 34-Game Hitting Streak,
58. Tony's 3,000th Hit,
59. Rickey's 3,000th Hit,
60. 12 Hours in Philly,
61. Rocky Mountain Low,
62. Wear Camo to a Game,
63. Before It Was the Q,
64. Matt Kemp's Cycle,
65. See a Padres Player Pitch a No-No,
66. Why the Padres?,
67. The Swinging Friar,
68. The 1968 Expansion Draft,
69. The First Game,
70. Dock's No-No,
71. The Curse of Clay Kirby,
72. Nate Colbert's Big Day,
73. Collect Washington Padres Cards,
74. "I've Never Seen Such Stupid Ballplaying",
75. Short-Order Cook at Third,
76. Big Mac Sundays,
77. History from the Other Dugout,
78. Alvin Dark's Spring Cleaning,
79. Jerry — Not Gary — Coleman Hired,
80. Hang a Star on That, Baby!,
81. Finishing Last Twice in '81,
82. Gwynn's Debut,
83. Skunks in the Tarp,
84. Beanballs with the Braves,
85. Eric Show Sits Down on Mound,
86. LaMarr Hoyt Trade Goes South,
87. Jimmy Jones' One-Hitter,
88. The Feeney Finger,
89. Clark vs. Gwynn — '89 Batting Title,
90. Barr-Strangled Banner,
91. Name All the Managers — in Order,
92. Take a Tour of Petco Park,
93. Western Metal Supply Co. Building,
94. Going 82 — 80,
95. Going Ape on the Padres' Plane,
96. Cammy's Snickers Bar,
97. Enzo Hernandez,
98. Buy a Painting from Gene Locklear,
99. Garth Brooks Makes a Hit,
100. In Closing ...,
Sources,