Remembering a pure hitter with a pure love of the game

San Diego Padres outfielder Tony Gwynn in the dugout at Yankee Stadium in New York in an Oct. 20, 1998 file photo. The Hall of Famer’s .338 career average is the best of anyone who spent his entire career in the integrated major leagues. (Barton Silverman/The New York Times)

By Tyler Kepner / The Athletic

The aspiring ballplayer could find it hard to concentrate in class. As a student at San Diego State, Seby Zavala would let his mind wander to his favorite lunchtime hangout, the one that served no food, just wisdom from a professor without peer: Tony Gwynn.

“He would sit in the dugout and eat his lunch every day, so I would get out of class and go straight to the dugout, just to talk to him,” said Zavala, a catcher in the majors for parts of the past four seasons.

“To be able to sit there and talk to a Hall of Famer about baseball or life — he didn’t care if you asked questions. He just wanted you to have a reason behind it. I would think of questions all day: How can I get better? What don’t I understand?”

Gwynn, the greatest pure hitter born in the past 100 years, would have turned 65 last Friday. He was the university’s baseball coach when he died of salivary gland cancer in 2014, and Zavala is one of three players from his final season who reached the major leagues, with Ty France of the Minnesota Twins and Greg Allen, an outfielder now in the minors with the Chicago Cubs.

“Those guys got to know him on a much closer basis than most,” Tony Gwynn Jr., now a San Diego Padres radio analyst, said at Yankee Stadium this week. “Even though he was sick when they were around him, they still got a piece of him that most people don’t get a chance to really experience.”

Zavala, who is now in the Boston Red Sox system, missed one of his college seasons with an injury. Gwynn, who had pioneered video study as a player, made Zavala the team videographer. By the end of the season, Zavala said, he was thinking along with the pitchers, predicting outcomes, unlocking a new vision that would carry him to the majors.

“That’s how I learned to read hitters, how to set them up and make them do what I want them to do,” said Zavala, who has played for the Chicago White Sox, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Seattle Mariners. “I look at the game differently because of all the things he taught me. I don’t think I’d be here without him.”

Zavala, France and a student manager, Cooper Sholder, got tattoos together commemorating Gwynn after he died. In the 11 years since, France said, he has come to appreciate Gwynn’s humility and accessibility.

“He did such a great job of humanizing himself, making it seem like he was not ‘Mr. Padre’ or San Diego’s greatest baseball player,” France said. “He was just Coach Gwynn, and to this day, I still refer to him as Coach Gwynn.”

Gwynn won eight batting titles in 20 seasons while collecting 3,141 hits. He could have gone 0-for-1,000 after he retired and still hit .305 — higher than the hit king, Pete Rose. Gwynn’s .338 career average is the best of anyone who spent his entire career in the integrated major leagues. Wade Boggs and Rod Carew are tied for second, 10 points behind the master.

“He just had a magic bat,” said Ron Darling, a former Mets right-hander who held Gwynn to a mere .441. “I gave up two hits to him that bounced, like cricket. Two bullets on balls that bounced.”

Gwynn hit .397 (50-for-126) off Greg Maddux and Pedro Martínez, with no strikeouts. John Smoltz struck him out him once while giving up a .462 average (30-for-65). Gwynn owned almost everybody: forkballers (Hideo Nomo, .560), knuckleballers (Tom Candiotti, .422), Cy Young Award winners (Doug Drabek, .469), World Series MVPs (Curt Schilling, .390), Leiter brothers (Al and Mark, .452) — on and on and on.

The numbers tell a story, and they can always be savored. But as time goes on, fewer active players will have known the man behind them.

“The stats are the stats, but the person — he was always so gracious with his time,” said Padres TV analyst Mark Grant, a former teammate. “In the old days, guys had their little mail cubbies in the clubhouse. Mine would have a gift certificate from Pizza Hut or something; his would just be stuffed. And he would actually bring shoeboxes of fan mail on the road to catch up on it in his hotel room. He was the whole package.”

Late in his life, Gwynn Jr. said, his father could see where the sport was going. Velocity was rising and hitters were increasingly incentivized to choose power over artistry. Today’s bat-to-ball specialists, such as Luis Arraez and Jacob Wilson, would have warmed his heart.

Still, while Gwynn famously served singles the opposite way — “There’s hits all over the field,” France said, repeating a mantra — he was far more than a slap hitter. In the last nine years of his career (1993 to 2001), Gwynn had his typical .356 average and .400 on-base percentage, but also a .500 slugging percentage. He averaged 13 homers a season, almost double his previous rate.

In his first game at the old Yankee Stadium, in the 1998 World Series, Gwynn homered off the facing of the third deck. Another hitting wizard from San Diego, Ted Williams, would have been proud.

“That was something I don’t know that he would have been capable of doing — or would have been willing to try to do — in the first 10 years of his career,” Gwynn Jr. said. “He learned that after his conversation with Ted in ’92 or ’93, telling him that, ultimately, you can have both.

“In order to get them to go out here, which you want,” Gwynn Jr. said, referring to the outside part of the plate, “you’ve got to get them out of here,” or the inside part. How are you going to do that? If you’re just inside-outing singles to left (Gwynn batted left-handed), he said pitchers tended to pitch inside. “So, you’ve got to start turning on some of these balls. He realized he didn’t have to give up his average or the things that he enjoyed in order to do that.”

Williams made a similar point in a 1995 interview with Gwynn and sportscaster Bob Costas: “That’s where baseball history is made — from the middle in,” he said. Williams was in his late 70s then — he lived to be 83 — and Gwynn said he wished others could have the same opportunity to absorb such wisdom.

“You can learn so much just from talking to people,” said Gwynn, who lived by that credo and passed it on.

France, a former All-Star who is now the Twins’ regular first baseman, said Gwynn would be “livid” at the state of modern hitting, especially all the strikeouts. France already has 100 or so more career strikeouts than Gwynn, in roughly 7,000 fewer plate appearances. It wasn’t always easy playing for a legend.

“I mean, he was just the greatest of all time,” France said. “Being able to do it for as long as he did, he didn’t understand that not all of us are him, and he would get upset and frustrated with us for not being as good as he is. He just held us to such a high standard.

“And while you’re going through it, you don’t really understand. You’re trying to figure out, ‘Why is he picking on me so much? Why does he want me to be him, essentially?’ But he just wanted the best for you. That was his biggest thing.”

The best of Gwynn, on the field and off, was about as special as anything we’ve ever seen. Happy birthday, Mr. Padre. And thank you.