Mr. Padre

It would take Mr. Padre to bring me out of a blogging hiatus. One last thing I owe Tony Gwynn.

I fell in love with baseball in the Summer of 1984. The Padres in their first World Series. I honestly don't remember any of the games, all I remember is the excitement felt throughout my family. I've mentioned I come from a sports obsessed family (the fact I never even blogged about California Chrome is kinda lame), so you can imagine the mini-me being caught up in the chaos. It was great until it ended, but for me it was just the beginning. Baseball remains my favorite sport to watch, live or on tv. Sometimes, I even listen to it on the radio. I always make it a point to go to Petco (even when I didn't live in San Diego) at least once year. To me, summer always means baseball.

Having a Tony Gwynn on your team is so awesome, I realized last week that I will probably never recover from it. Kings hockey is actually a great analogy: if you watched the Kings in the playoffs, even when they were down...you were confident they would come back. Irrationally confident which is the best type of high for a sports' fan. There is nothing like it. Tony Gwynn was similar in that every time he walked up to the plate, you were confident he would get a hit. If he didn't get a hit, he would walk. I always thought I had overly fond memories of Tony Gwynn because he was on my team and my viewpoint was biased. But to hear my views validated by everyone last week made me understand everything was just true: Tony Gwynn was an amazing hitter, a great guy, and there will probably be nobody else like him.

So thank you Tony Gwynn for never leaving a team who under-performed for years. Thank you for being an admirable guy with a sweet swing. Mostly, thank you for the love of the game.