A Moment Of Perspective
With all that has gone on recently in sports, I'd like to pause to reflect upon something truly nice:
Tony Gwynn is a Hall-Of-Famer.
Those words bear repeating.
Tony Gwynn is a Hall-Of-Famer.
As the old saying goes, he may not be in a class by himself, but it doesn't take long to call roll.
To wit:
Cobb.
Williams.
Oliva.
Carew.
Rose.
Boggs.
Gwynn.
That's about it.
This guy could do the most difficult thing in sports better than 99% of anyone who has ever been paid to do it, and he did it with a genuine smile on his face.
Gwynn proved that one doesn't have to be some chemically-enhanced hulk to hit a baseball; in fact, for most of his career, he looked like some beer league softball guy, or some throwback from the Seventies, before players fell in love with the weight room and forgot about the batting cage.
He looked like us.
His waist expanded in accordance with his age, just like us mortals. He got older, he got a little...rounder.
Just like us.
But a bulging waistline did not detract from the discipline that made him an all-time great. He saw the ball. He kept his weight back and his hands high. He took what the pitcher gave him and he hit the ball where someone was not standing.
He did that 3,141 times, for a lifetime batting average of .338.
Were a man to hit .338 for a season, he would stand to make millions.
Gwynn just like wearing out pitchers because he could.
Consider: Against Greg Maddux, arguably the greatest pitcher of his era (and a guy who is still pretty darned effective), Gwynn hit .429 for his career.
That bears repeating: Gwynn hit .429 against a pitcher with four consecutive Cy Young awards and 340 (and counting) career victories.
See, he didn't just wear out roster fodder like Zachary Taylor. He wore all of 'em out.
He was perhaps the one man who could argue with Ted Williams about hitting that Ted Williams would listen to and not dismiss outright...and that list is even shorter than the one I posted above. He also respected Ted Williams so much that, as a veteran of double-digit seasons, he took Williams' advice and changed his stroke on inside pitches...and posted his career high in home runs (17).
He coaches baseball for his alma mater, San Diego State, not because he needs the money, but because he gets to pass on the encyclopedic knowledge of hitting that he has gained from a lifetime of spanking the ball the other way.
Tony Gwynn is a Hall-Of-Famer.
Of course he is.
Tony Gwynn is a Hall-Of-Famer.
Those words bear repeating.
Tony Gwynn is a Hall-Of-Famer.
As the old saying goes, he may not be in a class by himself, but it doesn't take long to call roll.
To wit:
Cobb.
Williams.
Oliva.
Carew.
Rose.
Boggs.
Gwynn.
That's about it.
This guy could do the most difficult thing in sports better than 99% of anyone who has ever been paid to do it, and he did it with a genuine smile on his face.
Gwynn proved that one doesn't have to be some chemically-enhanced hulk to hit a baseball; in fact, for most of his career, he looked like some beer league softball guy, or some throwback from the Seventies, before players fell in love with the weight room and forgot about the batting cage.
He looked like us.
His waist expanded in accordance with his age, just like us mortals. He got older, he got a little...rounder.
Just like us.
But a bulging waistline did not detract from the discipline that made him an all-time great. He saw the ball. He kept his weight back and his hands high. He took what the pitcher gave him and he hit the ball where someone was not standing.
He did that 3,141 times, for a lifetime batting average of .338.
Were a man to hit .338 for a season, he would stand to make millions.
Gwynn just like wearing out pitchers because he could.
Consider: Against Greg Maddux, arguably the greatest pitcher of his era (and a guy who is still pretty darned effective), Gwynn hit .429 for his career.
That bears repeating: Gwynn hit .429 against a pitcher with four consecutive Cy Young awards and 340 (and counting) career victories.
See, he didn't just wear out roster fodder like Zachary Taylor. He wore all of 'em out.
He was perhaps the one man who could argue with Ted Williams about hitting that Ted Williams would listen to and not dismiss outright...and that list is even shorter than the one I posted above. He also respected Ted Williams so much that, as a veteran of double-digit seasons, he took Williams' advice and changed his stroke on inside pitches...and posted his career high in home runs (17).
He coaches baseball for his alma mater, San Diego State, not because he needs the money, but because he gets to pass on the encyclopedic knowledge of hitting that he has gained from a lifetime of spanking the ball the other way.
Tony Gwynn is a Hall-Of-Famer.
Of course he is.
Labels: Hall Of Fame, MLB, Tony Gwynn
posted by van walker | 11:00 AM
1 Comments:
Not to be cold, but my favorite part is how Gwynn has put on all this weight now -- which implies that his rotundness during his playing years might have been something he actually worked to maintain.
Like the day he retired he said to himself, "Thank god, now I can get fat!"
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