Sports at Lunch, Tony Gwynn
- 03-21-2006
- By Tom Shanahan, San Diego Hall of Champions
San Diego State’s baseball coach visited the Hall of Champions on March 21 for Sports at Lunch, but any visit from Aztecs baseball coach Tony Gwynn – Mr. Baseball in San Diego -- is an opportunity to discuss more than his job.
Lunch with Gwynn began with the Aztecs, of course, but Gwynn was open to all baseball and sports questions after speaking to a lunch crowd of 100-plus.
“Let’s get his out of the way -- we re 6-20,” Gwynn said of his team’s record. “Am I happy? No, but that’s part of the challenge of coaching. This is my fourth year here, and I love college baseball. It’s the perfect environment for me because I love teaching. We’ll get better – there’s no doubt in my mind.”
Gwynn cites a tough non-conference schedule – one he wanted – that included seven ranked teams and 18 of 26 games on the road. He wanted a tough schedule to prepare for Mountain West Conference play and home games at the end of the season. He expects his team to show improvement the remainder of the season and challenge for a berth in the NCAA tournament.
“I’m excited about where this university is going,” Gwynn said. “We’ll get there in baseball, too.”
A lunchtime chat with Gwynn is like talking sports with your buddies, although Gwynn knows a lot more than your buddy.
At the Hall of Champions, his talk switched from flowed from college basketball and the Aztecs’ NCAA appearance to the start of spring football under first-year coach Chuck Long and back to basketball with NCAA sub-regional played at Cox Arena.
He also talked about World Baseball Classic that didn’t include the USA team in the final four at Petco Park, former Dodgers catcher Mike Piazza as a Padre, the Chargers’ quarterback shuffle and his Baseball Hall-of-Fame eligibility in 2007.
But the most interesting and candid subject he discussed when asked was about steroids in baseball. Gwynn said the 1994 strike issues included some players that wanted testing included in the new contract.
“If you go back to 1994 when we went on strike, everyone thinks money,” he said. “That was one issue – money. But you never hear talk about the fight for testing. Being the player rep, I can tell you we were talking testing. We were concerned the game was headed down the wrong path and nobody paid attention to us. Now it’s 2006 and we have testing. If there is a positive test, everyone will know about it.”
Gwynn described baseball from 1987 to 2003, before testing, as the “steroid era.” He said in the future it will have to be explained to kids that the reasons players don’t hit 50, 60 and 70 home runs as they did during that period was steroids were part of the game.
“We’re just going to refer to I as the steroid era,” Gwynn said. “I played in the steroid era and I had 3,000 hits, but I can tell you they were all clean. I really feel good about that. During the course of my career, from 1982 to 2001, yeah, that conversation came up. If you have a chance to improve your numbers and make more money, would you do it? The answer for me was no. I want people to look back and say I did it the right way.”
Gwynn says nothing can be done about the numbers that were put up during the steroid era, but the game has to move on now that it is better off with testing.
“We have testing now,” he said. “Did anyone hit 60 home runs last year? Guys are smaller now.”
What else did Gwynn have to say about the WBC, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers and Aztecs basketball and football? You should have been at Sports at Lunch. He plans to be back next year for more sports talk.
Tom Shanahan can be contacted at 619-699-2334 or toms@sdhoc.com.
