Upon signing his first professional contract on this date — June 16 — in 1981, Tony Gwynn pegged his ETA in San Diego at three years. The San Diego State product, of course, needed only a little more than a year to carve out a path to the majors. The legacy that Gwynn built as Mr. Padre over the next three decades had grown well beyond San Diego when he lost a years-long fight with cancer at the age of 54, also on this date in 2014.
“Think about the number of people Tony’s touched, the generations he touched in San Diego for 30 years,” former Padres closer Trevor Hoffman, Gwynn’s longtime teammate, said in the Union-Tribune’s obituary.