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July 30, 1999 | |
Great article from the San Diego
Union-Tribune:
Tony's Hit Parade
On July 19, 1982, a Padres rookie got a hit off Phillie Sid Monge to start a list that soon will number 3,000 -- and Gwynn remembers most of it
By Chris Jenkins
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 30, 1999
Single-spaced, the computer printout is still a good half-inch thick, and it's only a partial list of all his major league hits detailed on those 49 pages. Compared with most other players in baseball history, though, Tony Gwynn's hit list is like reading "War and Peace."
You hand the pages over to Gwynn for analysis. He isn't impressed.
"If that's mine, just think how thick Pete Rose's is," Gwynn says. "And that lists just the hits. I've made a hell of a lot more outs than hits."
He peruses the list, flipping through the pages, studying the dates and names of his victims: Nolan Ryan, Al Hrabosky, Dave Stewart, Tom Seaver, Phil and Joe Niekro, Dwight Gooden, Joaquin Andjuar, Steve Carlton, Kent Tekulve, Oil Can Boyd and Pascual Perez, off whom Gwynn got so many hits in the mid-to late '80s, you'd have thought he were Michael Jackson.
Actually, Gwynn did get a hit off a pitcher named Michael Jackson. Also one off a poor kid named Porfi Altamirano. And there were the major league short-timers -- Kurt Kepshire, Doug Simons, Ravelo Manzanillo, Scott Holman -- now busting with fatherly pride as they tell their kids about giving up a hit to Tony Gwynn.
Bryn Smith . . . Zane Smith . . . Pete Smith . . .
"Wow," Gwynn says after running down the names. "This is sick."
Now he knows how pitchers feel whenever Gwynn steps up to the plate, wearing the same chipmunk expression every time, time after time for 16-plus years. His top front teeth are imbedded in his lower lip, his eagle eyes slightly squinted, his body swaying with a rhythm that's given hundreds of left fielders happy feet in anticipation of what's likely to come their way.
More than perhaps any player, it's hard to tell Tony Gwynn's at-bats apart. Yet, after close to 9,000 at-bats, he seemingly can tell them all apart.
"I can't remember which numbers they are," Gwynn says, "but certain ones do stick out."
The chronology and documentation are left to others. Off the top of his head, he recalls No. 1,000 coming off Ryan, No. 1,500 off Steve Frey of the Expos, No. 2,000 off Bruce Ruffin of the Rockies and No. 2,500 off Hector Carrasco of the Reds. All the landmarks are duly noted for posterity.
Only he can provide the marvelous detail, however.
"Everybody says, 'Oh look, he got No. 1,000 off Nolan Ryan, oh boy!' " says Gwynn. "Well, that list doesn't tell you Ryan jammed the (bleep) out of me and Jose Cruz lost it in the lights."
Gwynn's own favorite hits aren't the round-number jobs that everybody else notices, but the ones that gave him the greatest personal satisfaction, either because of the opponent or the amount of work and thought that went into them.
Like the night when Fernando Valenzuela had just set a major league record by opening the 1985 season with zero earned runs in 41-plus innings. The din from Valenzuela's standing ovation at Dodger Stadium hadn't yet subsided as Gwynn rifled a homer off his future teammate for a 1-0 Padres victory.
Absolutely nothing but pride was at stake -- and very few people were watching -- when Gwynn produced what he considers one of his greatest at-bats. The date was July 22, 1995. The Padres were in Atlanta, 71/2 games out of first, and trailing the Braves from the start.
"We rally to within one or two and (left-hander) Pedro Borbon comes in to face me," says Gwynn, summoning the memory as if it were a day old. "I know he's gonna try to get me to bite at something, he won't come after me, and I'm gonna make him throw me something to hit.
"He's got me 2-2. I laid off a breaking ball -- 3-2. He throws a slider that's too close to take. I barely get my bat on it and foul it off. He throws another slider, which was a ball, but I was anxious and fouled it off. I've seen seven pitches, and the only heaters I've seen, I've fouled off. He throws a slider up, I stay on it and carve it into left field for a base hit to tie the game.
"Going towards first I hear everybody in the Braves dugout. They're all just bleepity-bleeping me. 'What the bleep? How'd he do that?' I'm the only guy in the lineup they don't want to beat them. Two outs, man on third. They could've walked me and taken a chance with the next guy. I loved that at-bat. And it came in such a meaningless game."
Then there was the worst at-bat of Gwynn's life. Thing is, he wasn't even facing a pitcher.
So handily were the Padres romping over the Expos in a 1987 game at Montreal that Vance Law, an infielder, took over mop-up pitching duties.
"You know the crowd's into it, because their third baseman's on the mound," says Gwynn. "He's throwing knuckleballs, curveballs, sliders, everything. I'm 0-for-4 and everybody else is rakin', so I go up saying, 'I've got to get a hit.' Talk about abusing somebody. Knuckleball, swing and miss. Slider, foul it off the foot. Ball one. Law throws a batting-practice heater right down the middle and I ground out to second base.
"You talk about livid. I hit it and I didn't even want to run. Law was smiling at me as I was heading back to the dugout, but I wasn't smiling back. Everybody was laughing at me. Good thing it was get-away day, so we got the hell out of Dodge."
During a visit to Dodger Stadium in 1990, Gwynn came up with a man on second and one out, and recent call-up Jim Poole was summoned from the bullpen to make his major league debut.
"I could tell just from the way he jogged to the mound that he was a little nervous," says Gwynn. "The first pitch was a fastball he damn near threw over (catcher Mike) Scioscia's head for a ball. Next pitch was a curveball that fooled the crap out of me and fell in for a strike. I remember stepping out and thinking, that broke a lot.
"So he comes back with a big breaking ball, fools me again. He's starting to gain some confidence. Strike three! Breaking ball. When the umpire called it three strikes -- this is no lie -- Jim Poole starts jogging off the field like it's three outs. He's pattin' his glove and you can just see him thinking, 'I got Tony Gwynn out. My first big league hitter's Tony Gwynn and I just got him out . . . ' It's bad enough he fooled me, but then he's jogging off. Scioscia had to set him straight and put him back on the mound.
"I'm embarrassed, got my head hanging, beyond belief that this kid's thrown three breaking balls for strikes and I didn't pick up any of the three. Good benders, I mean, he was snappin' 'em in there."
Gwynn was both complimented and insulted, then, when a Dodgers ballboy came into the Padres clubhouse with the ball that Poole had used to whiff the mighty Gwynn. Through gritted teeth, he autographed the ball for Poole: "Nice job, Tony Gwynn."
"I didn't find out till the next day it was Scioscia who'd sent the ball over, just to get under my skin," says Gwynn. "He comes out for warm-ups laughing. I'm steaming, thinking, 'Man, next time I face this (Poole), I'm gonna bust him.' "
Gwynn grins.
"After that," he says, "I did get on that breaking ball of his pretty good."
To recall the most memorable hit of Gwynn's career, of course, the memory doesn't have to work that hard. It was only a matter of months ago that he fired that monumental mortar shot off David Wells in Game 1 of the World Series.
Relatively atypical as it was for Gwynn to display such a jolt of power, the story behind it was so typical Gwynn.
"That at-bat was my third of the game, but it stemmed from my first at-bat," said Gwynn. "We played hit-and-run with Wells. I put it on myself. He threw a good breaking ball, down and away, (Yankees shortstop Derek) Jeter broke and I flipped it over Jeter's head, just textbook."
Taking the combustible Wells' personality into account, Gwynn knew then and there that he'd seen his last breaking ball of the night.
"I told (Padres hitting coach) Merv (Rettenmund), 'He's gonna come inside, 'cuz he's (cheesed off)," says Gwynn. "I know Wells is thinking, 'I'm not gonna let this guy serve the ball out to left all game long.' "
Sure enough, in his second at-bat, Gwynn got an inside fastball that he couldn't quite get past first baseman Tino Martinez. Gwynn told Rettenmund that Wells would keep working him with inside speed. The fifth-inning fastball was barely out of Wells' left hand when Gwynn drove it off the face of the second deck in right field to break a 2-2 tie. "It was a slide-step fastball and I was on it," says Gwynn. "I knew it was gone and we had the lead, which was the best part. It was the biggest thrill. That took everything I had not to smile.
"I mean, I'd been waiting my entire career to play at Yankee Stadium. It's the World Series and I've just hit a homer. It looked really good on TV, too, like I really killed it. It got out quick because it was only 315 down the right-field line. Nothing could've been bigger than that.
"My mom's in the stands. My wife's in the stands, my kids are in the stands. I found out later they were sitting in a part where the New Yorkers were giving 'em a hard time. So when I hit the homer, my son stands up and begins yelling 'That's my dad! That's my dad! Take that!' He's up there talkin' yang."
Wells approached him next day with a question: How the hell did you hit that pitch?
"He wasn't talking about the home run, but the first hit I got," says Gwynn. "He didn't give a dang about the home run. You throw a bad pitch and a guy hits it out, those things happen.
"But when you make a good pitch and a guy flips it out into left on you, that sticks with you longer. That sticks with you forever."
Then again, long after No. 3,000, the image of Tony Gwynn taking a good pitch and flipping it into left will pretty much stick to him forever.
Story posted: 7/31/99 at 12:25 AM