BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…August 6, 1999, 25 years ago today:
San Diego’s Tony Gwynn notches a four-hit game to reach the 3,000-hit plateau as the Padres beat the Expos, 12-10, at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. And nobody should have been surprised that Gwynn did it that way, as he recorded 45 four-hit games during his career. Gwynn’s historic evening came six years to the day after his 2000th hit, and both milestones came on his mom’s birthday. Vendella Gwynn was there, and she came out onto the field to give her son a big hug at first base.
“Mr. Padre” played 20 big league seasons, all with San Diego. MLB.com had a cool list of nuggets from Gwynn’s career on what would have been his 60th birthday in 2020 (he died of cancer 10 years ago at the age of 54). Gwynn’s career batting average was .338, tops by far in baseball’s expansion era. He won eight National League batting titles, more than anyone in the past 100 years. Gwynn faced 18 Hall of Fame pitchers all told, and his average against them collectively was .331.
The 1994 season was a historic one for Gwynn. He batted .394, the closest anyone has come to hitting .400 since Ted Williams did so in 1941, but his quest for history was cut short by baseball’s devastating strike. “Could Gwynn have reached .400?” asked MLB.com writer AJ Cassavell. “It's pure speculation at this point, but he was batting .423 in the second half that year. Gwynn's .334 career second-half batting average is the third best in the last 50 years.”
Gwynn struck out three times in a game only once—against Bob Welch and the L.A. Dodgers in 1986. In his entire 20-year career, Gwynn struck out 434 times, an average of 21.7 Ks per season. In 2019, for example, 129 players had struck out 22 times by the end of April. Pitchers could never consider themselves “ahead in the count” against Gwynn. He finished his career batting .302 with two strikes. In fact, in 1994, Gwynn batted an absurd .397 in two-strike counts.
For Mountain West fans, Gwynn played both baseball and basketball at San Diego State (when it was in the WAC). Little-known fact: he almost played hoops for future Boise State coach Bobby Dye at Cal State Fullerton, but legendary Titans baseball coach Augie Garrido didn’t feel Gwynn could handle baseball, too. So he opted for the Aztecs, and he still owns several records in basketball for them. His 590 career assists are the most in school history and his 221 assists in the 1979-80 season are also a record.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
