MLB: Mr Padre (Tony Gwynn)

[Laughter] [Music] this is pretty much where all the magic is done [Music] oh yeah it's pretty sweet this is a 394. this is the masterpiece that my dad uh helped come up with well i'm happy i say that i never thought i'd hit 350. i don't think even when i was dreaming 394 was his highest batting average and he's going to line that up quinn absolutely now hitting 409. a drive to right field there's no doubt about this and a home run for tony gwynn these are things that my dad if he were here would be really trying to dive into so we're just really trying to keep his spirit alive all i gotta do is go like this the amazing tony hitting up into the 390s amazing 394 it's part of the the mission to never let his legacy go away [Applause] and there it is hi i'm tony the san diego padre i'm going to tell you a quick story all right we're in cincinnati uh now i'm coaching at this time riverfront rain and rain and raining it doesn't look too good right now though it's been raining pretty hard here in cincinnati we go back out to start again they're ahead two to nothing they bring in a left-hander another left-hander in face left-hander tony gwynn and tony comes to hit and the left-hander hadn't even thrown a pitch yet and the skies opened up game suspended it is a torrential downpour right now and that's it so tony gwynn will have to wait that means the next day the same lineup has to start we're walking up the tunnel a riverfront going up to the clubhouse and he turns to me goes hey flatten tomorrow this guy is going to throw me a first pitch slider i'm going to hit it in the left center field gap the score is going to be tied be ready and i'm like oh yeah i want her okay tony all right sure enough sure enough the next evening here's tony gwynn first pitch slider bangs it in the left center field [Music] both runs score he gets a second base and goes he knew what the pitcher was going to throw in before the pitcher knew what he was going to throw [Music] the museum part of this facility came about really because they wanted to honor my dad somehow if you're a baseball fan or a tony guy fan you can walk right into that museum and feel like he's in the building almost these are kind of just the things he gathered over time things that happened in his career a lot of really really cool memories though for those who knew him and for those who simply watched him the memories are still as strong as ever memories of a personality that always seemed to be bursting with pure joy for the game of an icon who decided there was only one place he wanted to play for two decades and perhaps the greatest hitting talent an entire generation of baseball ever saw [Music] tony he's been arts his stroke was gorgeous one of the great hitters of all time a tremendous feel for a little over here a little over here unbelievable it wasn't just hand eye and eyesight it was up here you know just a genius on the baseball field that's it the whole goal is to put the ball in play and put the ball and play hard that's i guess it's the ultimate the beat rolls on as he's run his average up to 389 and tony gwynn's third hit if you're going to hit like he did 340 50 60 70 80. you know the mental discipline toughness to go up there and not throw at bats away he always talked about hit four hunt he said that's a goal he hit balls hard all the time and nobody could get him out oh doctor you can hang a star on that baby a star for the ages for tony all those hits eventually added up to 3141 in total and along the way 15 all-star selections number 19 tony quinn eight national league batting titles and a career batting average of 338 all of which got him 97.6 of the votes in his first chance at the hall of fame and it was all belied by a humility that somehow always felt authentic can you explain to me how come your rapper looks so good and my mind looks so so ordinary i'm not one of the icons of the game look at his face look at yours okay that's why okay good enough for me you know i'm just a guy that goes out there and tries to get it done as best i can you could call tony gwen an anti-superstar superstar he didn't look like one on the field and he didn't act like one anywhere he went tony gwynn ranks two ways all-time great people right here i mean he's you're not gonna find anybody better all-time great baseball players there's a bunch of them but he's right there too i'm just happy to be here well tony most of us immortals have been in a situation where we've had some you start with the cold hard facts the 338 lifetime the eight batting titles but there was something else about tony guendou made him relatable and endearing what a day what a game what a country if you were central casting and you were looking for someone to play a baseball hero at least by physical type he might not be the guy but he was so down to earth he was approachable for a guy that was as big as tony was he never acted that way he's the most approachable big time star i've ever been around hi i'm tony guinn of the san diego padres all right guys good luck thank you thank you as a young kid i wanted to be just like tony gwen i wanted to be a professional baseball player i wanted to play for the padres hit the ball right barrels out front tony always made an extra effort to be a role model practice practice practice i remember this birthday specifically because that was the big highlight for that birthday was getting the tony gwynn poster and the tony nguyen wristbands with his face on there and i was decked out you know the impact it had on me is is priceless i see you're out here early again the thing about tony is when he walked in the room he just lit up the room good morning okay it is quarter to eight smile in his face always smiling that's just who my dad was he always went out of his way to make people feel comfortable whether that be fans other baseball players all started at the right field master he just was always full of joy you wanted to be around him [Laughter] this picture day is picture day my dad just enjoyed people he enjoyed life he enjoyed talking as you can see nobody's standing around me i'm out here talking to myself it's a big part of what makes his story so unforgettable that he loved talking as much as he loved hitting that his spirit and his voice were as distinctive as his swing who knows what might happen today you know and freddie got the wrong loft on his club it's the truth oh it was a unique voice and you knew when tony was around you could hear his voice my eyes on the phone yeah you got to go y'all you could hear his voice he's high pitched and cackled he can do it all oh yeah i know i'll be nervous unbelievable i'll tell you man that was his talking trash i'll tell you man let's wait for the helicopter this week you betcha you're gonna get a pitch to hit so why he said things like man just pick out a cookie and let it fly you gotta get a fastball it's gonna be right there let it fly you know and it was just so funny you knew it was tony gwynn he was so unique because every little kid who picks up one of my best he said oh yeah i could swing this and they could it's it's not that big it's just what you do with it that's the key all these years later it's important to remember just how alive tony gwen always was if only to remind yourself how much was lost when he was taken far too soon i'm still a little shocked that he's not here like i feel it couldn't have happened it didn't happen it can't happen but it happened so now as a broadcaster for the padres i think of him every game every game [Music] i met tony when he was about 10 i wanted to play kickball and it was all guys and they wouldn't let me play and he stopped and said she could play ever since i've known him he was always real kind and that's when we became friends tony gwen's road in life and in baseball started about a hundred miles north of san diego in long beach california he was the middle child in a family of three boys and his brothers charles and chris knew from the beginning he had a gift in the backyard charles and i went out we still talked about it to the day could never get him out sliders fastballs change ups right back as your head tony loved the game of baseball he loved he had a passion for it but basketball was really tony sport he had high school he was the point guard long beach poly was the champions seem like every year but long beach probably wasn't very competitive in baseball at that time and i think he was thinking about not playing which is hard for me to even think about my mom she made him continue to play you're going to need baseball one day is what she said but when tony graduated high school in 1977 baseball didn't seem to need him he went undrafted and didn't get any offers to play in college basketball though was a different story and tony got a scholarship to play guard at san diego state university this guy could play i mean to this day he holds the assist all-time record at san diego state i saw him play against depaul kansas and all these big time basketball schools i saw him play against danny ainge all the time because danny angel was at byu and i saw him you know hold his own i mean he was good so good in fact and so important to his team that his coach wouldn't let him join the baseball team insisting that tony focus entirely on basketball at least until his junior year i always thought the basketball coaches were trying to keep him a secret but word ultimately leaked when the aztec's top baseball recruit bobby meacham arrived on campus in 1979 i had known tony because of playing against him in summer ball but hadn't seen him in in a while and as i'm sitting here talking to jim dietz in his office you know i saw somebody walking by and i said wait is that tony gwynn i'm like oh wow great so you know we'll be better he goes no he's not playing baseball i'm like wow that's crazy i said this guy's the best baseball player i've ever played against bobby meacham told me about this young man and i said um okay but the problem is he's playing basketball we talked to tony and tony's like you know i'd love to play but i can't his reaction was yeah i want to but i'm afraid of the basketball coach i think that was his exact words he was stuck i said tony i'll go and talk with the coach then i kept kind of working on him working on him then he finally said yeah go ahead give it a try so we tried and gwen's college baseball debut in the middle of that 79 season would become part of his legend i was concerned about him not swinging a bat for two or three years but it was this line drive after a line drive after a line drive he had not had batting practice had not really gotten into it had not trained and he went over there and went three for four after about a week or two he's got just as many rbis as i do you know he's just just many hits i mean it's just crazy how good he is [Music] from there there was no turning back and over the next two years he played both sports at san diego state the agreement was that tony couldn't play baseball until the basketball season was over he would play his last basketball game and then come out to baseball the next day you come out from basketball you're running all year and then you come out here and you start playing games right away and you're playing all the time and you're missing a lot of school it's rough but you know you just if you want to do it you really have to concentrate it at what you're doing in 1981 all gwen's work and all his talent caught the eye of the san diego padres new general manager jack mckeon we always had an annual exhibition game with the padres and the aztecs day before opening day i'm sitting up in the box with the athletic director and tony comes up hits the double watch him run the bases comes up the next time hits a triple i said who the hell is this guy he says tony gwynn i said where's he been i've seen you play 15 games i haven't seen this guy he said he just came out last week i said this is the best guy on that field i think that was including major liquors as well sure enough on june 9 1981 tony gwynn was drafted by san diego twice as both a baseball and basketball player big day in the gwen household that day he got drafted by padres then the clippers who were in san diego then i mean it was the story here that he got drafted by both local teams not being a big guy he chose baseball what would have been interesting if tony was you know a six-six guard would he have gone with basketball his first love we'll never know that the same week he got drafted we got married he was just so happy and i remember him saying i'm going to work hard i want to work hard i'm probably going to play about five years and then i'll go on to do something else he never thought he would be that good but as soon as he turned pro those doubts were overpowered by his play gwen would fly through the miners in 1981 winning a batting title and league mvp award the next season barely a year out of college he was in the majors and attracting the attention of all-time greats you know tony's playing his first game against the phillies gets his first hit and pete rose hey kid pete rose comes up to me and shakes my hand and says uh you're trying to catch me after one night you know and it just the whole atmosphere that was just was really nice in his first full season in the majors 1983 tony gwynn was greeted by a totally unfamiliar experience a hitting slumber to find a way out he turned to something commonplace now but unheard of then you know when you talk about the video today i consider him the father of the video clubhouse see the first thing i do when i'm hitting is i check my front foot when tony had his first hitting slump and i remember we had bought a beta machine for a little tony because we wanted to tape him out in the backyard we hooked it up it's been hooked up through the tv and you know we really hadn't even used in this one day i was struggling and i asked my wife to take my bats while we were on a road trip that's a good swing right there front foot is locked in he would say leash can you go look at at bat number two and tell me what i'm doing wrong his wife was probably the best hitting instructor of anybody because she knew exactly what he did to find success and she could look at the video and they would discuss it and when it goes to shortstop in order to hit the inside pitch i really have to get my hands through in a hurry we became a team you know i wasn't out there hitting but we became a team so that's kind of like what i do best right there is just take the inside fast one fight it off and hit it the other way he was relentless with the studying of in fact we lost him as a poker player because of the video so we used to kid about that you know this video is killing our poker game solid front leg heads down on the ball perfect the next year 1984 would be historic for both number 19 and his club establishing the roots for what would be an everlasting bond between the emerging superstar and his adopted hometown his love affair started in 84 he was very attuned he didn't come from here he came from long beach but he went to san diego state and he was like a native son based on that they adopted him for that well i'm kind of partial to twenty gwen because he went to san diego state that's where i go he loved the city they loved him back and i think 84 put padre baseball on the map the padre franchise turned 15 in 84 and they came into it still looking for their first ever winning record as we go into the 84 season we had acquired some players steve garvey goose gossip and greg knight also now it's a different club their mindset their confidence i came over here to help win a pen and i'm not going to win it all by myself so as the season goes uh we got alan wiggins and uh tony gwen it was really these two guys ignited this club alan wiggins let off alan very fast and tony guinn wasn't tony gwynn yet to that point so they're worried about wiggins and they're feeding fastball after fastball to tony gwynn and he's turning on that stuff and hits 350 and all of a sudden wow it all comes together tony just continues to amaze it was tony's first year where he felt like he kind of really knew he belonged gwen propelled the padres to a franchise-record 92 wins and earned his first all-star selection his first batting title and his first silver slugger award although he was doing all these things and leading the world and hitting and everything it was about us winning he was so excited about the san diego padres having a chance to win for the first time ever the padres cruised into the playoffs winning their first division title by 12 games and after they erased a two-game deficit against the cubs in the nlcs the knockout blow came off the bat of san diego's emerging superstar the padres had never gone to the world series or want to pin it so we were the first to do that in san diego to have him blossom in 84 and lead us to the world series was something special though the padres would fall to the detroit tigers in five games in the world series for gwen and the city of san diego a love affair was just beginning tony's whole desire from that point on i believe was to go to back to another world series and win for san diego he became part of the city and part of the padre organization and in what would become a recurring theme in his career gwen expressed his loyalty by signing a team team-friendly contract extension a month after the world series after 84 he had absolutely no intention to ever be a free agent and he always took what they call the san diego discount where he thought he could have been making more and he could have been making more without question but to him it was anathema to think about leaving san diego so with his contract guaranteeing he'd stay a padre for at least the rest of the 80s gwen focused on improving upon his breakout season by working on his skills away from the plate when we first drafted tony gwynn he could hardly throw the ball from his right field position to second base i talked to him one day and i said what would you like to be tony i want to be a gold glove outfielder i want to be recognized as a good base dealer and he said i know i'm a good hitter whenever you hear tony gwen the first thing you hear is hit hitting hitting hitting and i just want to be remembered as a complete ball player there's a looping fly ball shallow right tony gwynn is there reneki is going to try it here's the throw he's going to be out it was just amazing to see him turn into this force defensively nice play by gwen man you can he became that total complete superstar once he understood the defense and for the remainder of the 1980s no one was a more successful individual performer than tony gwen he won three straight batting titles from 1987 to 89 three more silver slugger awards and three gold gloves as well we could tell tony was a lot more special than any of us that's for sure could i tell you that he was going to win this many batting titles and this many gold gloves no there should have been another league for him to go to but the major leagues is the last one [Music] i've always been a big fan of these silver bats like you won a bad time you get a silver pet i remember one point they were talking about if you got to 400 he asked them you got to get a gold medal and it was like something we'll discuss after four batting titles and five all-star appearances in the 80s tony gwen continued to shine at the plate in the 90s and of all his great seasons none was better than gwen's bid for history in 1994. there's a patented tony gwynn hit right there ground ball base hit that guy can flat out hit really amazing to watch him that year 94 i mean he really did have a chance at 400 we all felt it the thing about tony that stands out i think he'd get a hit whenever he wanted to wherever he wanted to he positioned the defense and he he stepped out for minutes look around i said oh here he comes tony gwynn strikes again okay so shorts up we should move more to the middle bam based at the middle future hall of famer just can't be stopped could hit where he wanted this year just been unbelievable everybody seems to think you're the guy you could do more than anybody else you can do it and you know i i don't know it was about june we're playing the padres and he's he's in about 360. one for three tonight towards the hole and through the beat rolls on as he's run his average up to 389 and then we played him again in august he's at 390 to make a move like that you know he was gonna do it on the field of dreams a giant anti-climax yes the baseball season is over the 94 strike ended the baseball season in august cutting short gwen's run at 400. i remember you know he would just laugh i would joke with him about it and i said well i told you all along that you had no chance of hitting 400. i just you know it's too big a number for you you couldn't do it because i always teased him about that because i knew darn well he could and finally he said you know what that's the only way that i wasn't going to hit it that's rare for my dad to ever admit anything like that because that question would come up often like do you think you could have hit 400 that year i don't know he was pretty adamant that he would have because i think i could have i was in a zone where it just didn't matter what they were throwing up there i was he was felt good enough he was gonna hit everything at 394 for what it was worth gwen fell three hits shy of 400 three hits shy of joining one of his idols a fellow san diegan and kindred spirit it's the winter in between the 94 and 95 season and we sit tony and ted down for a joint interview just sitting here listening to him speak you know i i all ears ted was a very you know imposing figure and i will never forget it started out you know where he just with this you know booming voice would just say that's where baseball history's made from the middle end and ted who loved to do this started posing questions to tony if you were underneath were you early or late i mean if you're underneath the pitch what are you generally early or late tony was like a kid in the back of the room in the fourth grade hoping a the teacher doesn't call on him and b please god if the teacher does let me get the answer right well see that's different with me i i say late i say late too i hit the ball the other way in the corner going yes yes it was like i was pulling for him he didn't need anybody rooting or pulling for him i like your light history is made all right remember on your big nick salary race don't forget about old man ted thank you great to see you a major league history is made on the ball inside and you know your brain starts my brain starts to take i'm trying to figure out what he meant and when i did i realized i was going to be a much better hitter from that point on and i was in the years following 94 gwen's brilliance somehow did grow he hit above 350 for three straight years and hit with more power power he put on display back on the game's brightest stage that's one of the most vivid memories i have sitting in the stands with my family i remember we were sitting right across from denzel and bruce willis and little tony he was really giving them the business my brother is a big trash talker and you know they were just going back and forth me and these these fans were going back and forth and then my dad hit that homer ripped down the right field line at the track at the wall gone i mean i don't think i've screamed any louder at a baseball game than that moment tony gwynn goes deep with his first post season home run to put san diego out in front four to two i don't think i had ever seen my dad smack a ball that hard before it was like top dead okay all right dad to me that's the biggest hit i got because in the world series there's no bigger stage than playing in yankee stadium gwen would hit 500 in that series but the padres were swept making them oh and two in the fall classic over his career he did all he could to help us win you know we just ran into a juggernaut but i think you know the country saw how great tony gwynn was in that world series [Music] the following season all eyes again fixed on gwen as he approached one of the game's most storied milestones the pitch there's a drive right center field face hitter you can hang a star on that baby a star for the ages for tony gwynn number 3 that's it that's that's 3 000. you know and then this rush of guys coming over to congratulate you somebody said look who's behind you and i turn around and it's my mom to me this is the way it was supposed to be done that year also created one of gwen's greatest baseball memories at the all-star game an all-century team celebration at fenway park with an old friend now for the first pitch ted williams where is he right there all right we see his eyesight so he's asking gwen to help him out in that department he got it up there [Music] that's my favorite moment in this game to be the last guy standing out there with ted williams as he threw out the first pitch was was a bass it was the best he was so happy he said did you see they wanted me to do it did you see that how cool is that leash how cool is that two years later a 41 year old gwen battling injuries announced his retirement his final game would be a salute from the san diego faithful i remember how tough it was for him to say goodbye thank you thank you thank you even after the game was finished all the people were like staying there because they wanted to get another glimpse of my dad and it was just surreal like all these people that just love my father [Music] speaks to who he is [Music] after his retirement from the padres in 2001 tony gwen didn't stay idle for long [Music] a year later he returned to his alma mater as the aztecs head coach he came to me and asked me you know what do you think if i coach i said well the stadium's named after you i think would be pretty easy okay we're not just hitting the baseball we're getting through the baseball what parent wouldn't want their kid to go to college and have tony gwynn teach him how to play the game well you know at the beginning you know it was very hard for him i said no you're going to have to learn patience because everybody is not gonna get out of bed hitting like you and you have to understand that as soon as he lifts his foot my first step is back he began to talk to the kids and begin to teach them besides his family that was his heart but family wasn't too far away at work thanks to a young outfielder named tony gwen jr my dad didn't want to name me anthony that was my mom's uh gig and i think he was afraid that the pressure might be too much when i got to state my freshman year my first game out i went by tony junior i think i went over four immediately changed that to anthony see i was like leash people are giving him the business and i don't want my son to get the business you should have named him tony junior and i said he'll be just fine tony junior was the first of several players to make the big leagues out of his dad's program and the others that followed included the kid who dressed like tony gwen growing up dreaming of being just like him when i got there i saw my childhood idol you know he kind of half-heartedly said is like you know you guys got to get over it you know it's not tony gwen mr padre it's coach quinn the future top overall pick steven arrived on campus in 2007 as a work in progress it wasn't like i was coming in as like a top prospect i wasn't on any prospect sheets i thought i bit off more that i could chew steven had some challenges with his you know fitness his strength i kept telling him i think he's gonna quit and i was you know we're all worried about that and he's like i got it i remember you know tony just kind of pulling me aside what tony taught steven was just embracing the grind i was definitely like shocked you know this is tony gwen this is a guy that i watched on the tv my whole life to get that encouragement from him was huge and i can tell you by the time he was a junior he outworked everybody in the country you know if it wasn't for coach when would i have gone on to get drafted my junior year and yada yada yada probably not he was like a second father to me tony gwen had found his second calling though in the winter of 2007 five years after he'd retired everyone's focus was back on everything mr padre did with the bat for whatever reason maya just he never thought that it was a lock for him to get into the hall of fame they called me future hall of famer certain hall of famer you know first time all i i don't i never take it for granted you know i mean i'm flattered people mention money well i was a complimentary player i wasn't a game changer it makes it makes me laugh he geared himself up for great disappointment and so on hall of fame election day 2007 despite those 3 1441 hits 15 all-star appearances and eight batting titles tony gwen wasn't convinced he'd get the call from cooperstown they said the call is going to come like at 10 30 or something and tony's sitting in a corner saying they're not going to call it's not going to be the day my agent is talking in the background i can hear him oh it's going to rain don't even worry about it well at 10 31 there had been no call yet and tony's see i don't and then the phone rings and his first thing is don't pick it up he gets away that's the call hello hello tony please this is tony tony this is jack o'connell with the baseball riders association from new york city how are you today i'm good i am calling to tell you that the baseball writers have elected you to the hall of fame congratulations when they made the phone call you could just see like the weight being lifted off he exhaled and was like wow like i've made it he said i never thought this would happen can you believe this leash hard to believe isn't it and i said no you were just that good i only know one way that's the padre though i'm proud his head could be a san diego padre i played for one team i played in one town i told the people of san diego they were going to be standing up here with me so i hope they're just as nervous as i am tony gwynn was inducted into the baseball hall of fame in the summer of 2007. but three years later came the news gwen was diagnosed with oral cancer for those who knew him well the cause was no surprise he always had a dip he would just be sticking it out of his lip chewing tobacco is a generational deal that generation of guys constantly had a dip or had bubble gum wrapped around tobacco it was just part of what you did everybody dip they always go i can't tell you i remember being a victim of red dixie spit cups that were left around the house thinking that uh it was maybe some juice i had porn we all had dip on us in the early years we thought it was a safe alternative to smoking i distinctly remember the reps always saying oh no this is not cigarette smoking and i never believed anything that they said because i said it's tobacco nowadays there's precautionary warnings when he first got on that there were no precautionary warnings that was after the fact but that was after the fact that he already had an addiction to it i remember my mom fussing at my dad quite often about leaving those cups around and eventually that turned into why are you doing it it's disgusting there are a couple times he tried to quit and wasn't very successful he was the poster child for addiction constantly trying to quit using the synthetic using whatever he just couldn't it was part of his routine he had to have a dip the woman at the convenience store near his house when he would go she would badger him tony tony what are you doing why are you buying that stuff don't you know what's bad yeah yeah yeah i know i know and i'm going to quit i'm going to quit him again i remember he was almost in tears one time he said i can't stop when did you first notice that that he was sick me and my mom are watching him do something on tv and she kept saying you know the side of his face was growing she was like you got to get that checked you know he would feel sluggish and just didn't didn't feel good and finally he went and when they did the biopsy took it out they said it was cancerous my mom calls me and drops that on me and i was crushed i was crushed it was like the world just stopped like what all of us that knew tony we were just stunned i mean here's the star that you know we look at it's almost immortal and here he is sick the wound where the surgery was wasn't healing 100 percent there was a bandage all the time it was just you know he wasn't himself it was difficult you know the ups and downs the cancer kept coming back but you know what he never complained the one thing that i know that kept him positive and driven was our 35 boys in our program and he wanted to be here every single day and he would go to chemo in the morning and he'd come to practice that was his love he didn't want to let the boys down and he could barely get around but he wanted to go at that point he started to see like kind of the effect that it was taking on his body you know it was it was really really sad to see the last time when they told him the cancer had came back he was just done he didn't want to do any more treatments he didn't want to be weak he said if i'm going to go out i'm going to do it my way that's what he said do you remember the last conversation you had um it wasn't really a conversation he was just like you know i want to listen to some music i want some funk so i put some i don't know what i put on i think i put like some commodores or something on and he was just tapping his feet clapping his hand he was just having a good time that i loved about tony even up until the end he was still happy he was still tony you know and i i remember he said to me you know leash i just gotta know that you're gonna be okay he said you carry on and he said don't let the people forget about me four years after being diagnosed with oral cancer tony gwynn passed away at the age of 54. major league baseball today mourns the tragic loss of tony guinn the greatest padre ever he is gone all too soon when i got that call it was [Music] i don't know there are no words [Music] that was sad sad i can remember how quiet it was around this athletic area and i just remember that you know it was very very sad day for us it was difficult for all of san diego the tony gwynn statue at petco park i remember the outpouring the days after he died of all the flowers there it was overwhelming like i knew my dad was a great person and i knew that he was one of the most genuine people but to see people outside feel the same way that i do it was just like wow i had a guy who came up to me he said my heart really aches right now and i never met your husband and he said i really really miss him he said this city has a void right now [Music] gravesite i visited one time said the living hearts were leave behind is not to die and this guy lives in hearts behind that he left in san diego big time my dad kind of had that infectious thing about him that even if you didn't know him you felt like you knew him tony's life is a perfect uh lesson on how to live it one of the most signature things about tony that everybody understood it's that laugh [Laughter] can you do his laugh i can't i i got to get that that hoarseness of the throat [Laughter] it started way down deep in his gut and it worked its way up i can't i can't i try you cannot replicate it he was uplifting just to be around him that's why people loved him that incredible laugh that i keep on my phone by the way it's the laugh it's the person then the ball player [Music] he was real he was a superstar that was like every man you could see from day one he was so much better than everyone else [Music] i got to see tony going back four or five times a game for 20 years that's something you tell your grandchildren [Music] he did it the tony gwynn way he did it the right way and that should be his legacy forever field earlier number three hey hey number 19. running on the grass that will green when you play you play to win and i'm talking about tony gwen now i just want all you fans out there to know coming for me no script no nothing this is from the heart it has been absolutely wonderful playing major league baseball for the last 20 years having the opportunity to mingle and talk to you fans i know i've enjoyed it i hope you have too and so with that i say goodbye and thank you

Channel: cacable7

Views: 59,826

Rating: 4.9375 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: xxq3ipIKG8E

Length: 44min 59sec (2699 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/whsbear]

Thanks. I cried the whole time.

[u/IMadeThis1_2_19]

Tonyy!!!! That homer in the 1998 World Series was the greatest moment in Padres history til the ump gave Tino Martinez 4 strikes.

[u/zalde1913]

I Love You Tony Gwynn......

[u/MySweetUsername]

Who cut the fucking onions...

[u/This_Fkn_Guy_]

I had it on my dvr for a while and it deleated some how...can we buy this anywhere?