BY POPULAR DEMAND : Tony Gwynn Is Not Only a Good Hitter and Fielder, He’s Also Nice to Fans

This is a story about the San Diego Padres’ Tony Gwynn, but it is not about his swing. Nor his two National League batting championships. Nor his two Gold Gloves.

This is a story about, among other things, his laugh.

“(He) laughs more than anybody I have ever seen, anywhere,” said Padre equipment manager Brian Prilaman. “Laughs at good jokes, bad jokes, stuff that nobody in the world would laugh at.”

“Incredible laugh, lets everything out,” said Padre minor league trainer Steve Sayles, one of Gwynn’s best friends. “I’ve seen him laugh so hard, he falls on the floor and rolls around, right in the clubhouse. Happens all the time.

“I’ll look down at him and think, ‘This is a two-time batting champion?’ ”

“That’s me,” Gwynn said later, leaning forward in a chair in the Padres’ spring clubhouse. “But what’s the big deal? I’m just like you. I’m just a person.

“I can’t (stand) people who think baseball players are better than anybody else. Don’t you realize how lucky we are? How lucky I am?”

He ponders that notion for an instant and suddenly begins laughing, harder, harder still, laughing until pieces of Skoal snuff are falling from his mouth.

Ask the people on the Padres, or people who deal with Tony Gwynn in the business world, or anybody who has ever needed an autograph, a broken bat, or just a smile and silly laugh.

They will tell you, it is not Tony Gwynn who is lucky. It is them.

Through their research and observations, we offer this premise:

Tony Gwynn is the nicest superstar in baseball.

A story:

“We’re walking across the street from the ballpark in St. Louis after a game, trying to get back in time to get pizza delivered to our room,” Padre pitcher Greg Booker recalled. “Tony is telling me he’s just starving. All he’s talking about is this pizza.

“But all of a sudden, kids surround Tony on the sidewalk, and give him all this stuff to autograph, and he stands there and signs and signs . . . and by the time we get back, the pizza place has closed. We get nothing. And Tony isn’t mad or anything.”

Booker continued: “I looked at him and said, ‘Hey, Tony, don’t be afraid to turn somebody down sometime , huh? He looked at me and said, ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’ ”

Booker sighed.

“That story, multiply it about 100 times. Happens everywhere.”

Another story.

“We’re doing this appearance at our new Class-A minor league park in Riverside,” explained Mike Swanson, Padre assistant public relations director. “Some TV guy comes up to Tony and says, ‘So, how are you going to like playing here?’ Our other guys hear this and are dying. Tony smiles and answers the guy’s questions, talking about the ballpark’s dimensions and so on.

“Finally the guy says, ‘So, what’s your name?’ Tony shakes his hand and introduces himself, and the guy’s chin hits the ground. You know Tony. He just laughed.”

One more story.

Gwynn was watching a basketball game in his Poway home one night when the doorbell rang. It was a woman Tony had never seen.

“Please Mr. Gwynn, I don’t have much money, and all my son wants for Christmas is just one of your baseball bats.”

Gwynn ran down to his basement and brought up a bat, a ball, a poster, and a pen, which he used to autograph all of it.

The woman thanked him and ran off. An hour later, the doorbell ran again. It was the same woman, this time with her husband.

“You were so nice,” she told him, “I just wanted my husband to meet you.”

After a few minutes of conversation, the husband let it slip. The bats and souvenirs were actually for him.

Tony Gwynn laughed.

“They really duped me, huh?” he recalled. “Shoot, give them credit. They were nice people. I’m a sucker, I’ll admit it.”

Gwynn annually costs the club hundreds of dollars in bats. When he breaks one, instead of sending it up to the gift shop to be sold for $10-15, he will search the stands and give it to some youngster.

“There is nothing better than to make unsuspecting child’s day with something so simple,” Gwynn said. “That’s why I love spring training. A lot of the kids here are so innocent, they have never seen baseball players before. They really get a thrill out of it.

“If we can’t make people happy like that, why even play baseball? What are we playing for, anyway?”

Gwynn annually costs the club a lot of time in the handling and processing of fan mail. He insists on receiving, and answering, each piece himself. If he can’t get it answered during home stands, he brings it on the trips. Everything is autographed, everything is returned.

“I’ve seen him flip out those baseball cards on a table like he’s playing solitaire, and sign every one of them,” Prilaman said.

“I know, some of these aren’t from kids,” Gwynn said. “I know, some people sell my autograph. But what am I going to do?”

Then there is the clubs’ media relations department. He is their patron saint.

“Absolute best I’ve ever dealt with,” said Swanson, who has worked both leagues. Gwynn is actually their patron savior, with things like:

--Their nightly audio line, that requires a player to talk on a tape. “Tony is our safety valve,” Swanson said. “When nobody else will talk, Tony will talk. Every loss, he will talk.

--Students from Yuma Junior High. “A couple of guys turned down this group interview with them,” Swanson said. “As always, I turned to Tony. He turned a 10-minute session into a half-hour of joking and laughing.”

--With unusual requests from miles away. A persistent New York writer once phoned the Padres for an interview with Gwynn about umpires. Gwynn was never available until once, while the writer was talking with Swanson on the phone, a weary Gwynn walked past the office.

“Hey Tony, want to grab this phone and give this guy two quick minutes?” Swanson said.

Gwynn grabbed the phone and, 30 minutes later, Swanson returned to find him, his feet propped up on Swanson’s desk, still talking.

“The media has been good to me, I try to be good to them,” Gwynn said. “I treat them like they were anybody else, no worse than me, like I try to treat everybody. It’s just common courtesy.

“But I know, sometimes I might do too much. Sometimes I’m an easy target.”

A sucker, yeah. Tony Gwynn knows that much about himself now.

For most of his 27 years, his curse has been that he could never understand why, if he was nice, why couldn’t everybody be nice in return? He could never accept it. He never knew when to duck. A sucker. As he enters sixth season with the Padres, fresh with a $500,000 raise and newly guaranteed year on a contract that will keep him in San Diego until at least 1990, Gwynn promises that he has learned.

He has learned that someone can actually be too nice. And trust too much.

He has learned something about business managers. And he learned something about fans.

Last May, Gwynn made a Chapter 7 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Diego. In court documents, he listed liabilities of $1,147,000 and assets of $690,150.

The problem? He says he blindly followed former agent and business manager Lewis C. Muller.

“Muller was there for Tony back when nobody had heard of Tony, back in college,” said Gwynn’s current agent, John Boggs. “Tony is so loyal, he couldn’t think of not trusting him.”

Said Gwynn: “I was looking out for other people instead of myself. Somebody would say, ‘Let’s build a hospital in Gila Bend, Ariz.,’ and I would sign up without even looking. I’ll admit it. I got burned.”

Then when he took right field at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium immediately after the bankruptcy announcement, he was burned again. But this situation was harder to accept. These were supposed to be his fans.

“I heard things yelled behind my back that shocked the hell out of me,” Gwynn said. “Racial comments, bankruptcy comments, shocked the hell out of me. I remember what they are, but I’m not going to tell you. I’m not going to make it worse.

“I can understand them saying things on the road, but at home? I couldn’t figure it out. I guess some of them just don’t like me.”

His anger peaked the night he nearly ran into a fistful of ice cubes.

“Some guy had thrown ice at me just as I was running out there,” he recalled. “I saw it coming, I saw who did it. I nearly climbed into the stands. But I figured, it wouldn’t do any good.”

Yes, he says, after last season he has learned.

“When it comes to money, I am tougher, meaner,” he said. “I told John Boggs, ‘You’re my best friend, but I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.’ ”

And the fans?

“Well, I can’t change with them,” he said, shrugging. “Not all of them were shouting bad things at me. And I can’t remember the faces of everybody who did.

“Yes, I have thought that maybe I am going about this all wrong. Maybe I should be tougher. But I can’t.

“I know that what I do, I couldn’t do by myself,” he said. “But I just don’t talk about it.”

“I’m no saint. I curse. I get mad.”

When?

Said Booker: “Never seen it.”

Said Boggs: “Sorry, can’t help you.”

Said Gwynn: “Shoot, I can remember one time, in New York a couple of years ago, everybody was asking me if I could hit .400, when I was hitting about .340 at the time. Finally one guy asked me and I snapped. I said, ‘Man, I’ve been asked that question all damn day. Give me a break!’ See, I can be mad too.”

Of course, what happened the next day? “I apologized to the guy,” he said. “I don’t know him, but we made up.”

He credits his behavior to his parents, who raised he and brother Chris, a Dodger outfielder, in Long Beach.

“They just instilled in me a will to treat people right,” he said. “No big thing. Just treat them in the manner in which you were treated.”

Others say his attitude comes from the fact that Gwynn has never quite grown up. Imagine if a fan were magically granted one season as a big league player. That’s how Gwynn conducts himself.

He is the first one at the ballpark, usually arriving by 1 p.m. for a 7 p.m. game. Often he will just sit alone in the dugout and listen to a tape and stare at the field.

He jokes with teammates and writers and fans. He talks with just about everybody.

Sometimes he will walk back to equipment manager Prilaman’s office shouting: “I’m calling a meeting!”

He and Prilaman and any nearby club official will sit around eating candy bars and talking about the news of the day.

Said Prilaman: “A lot of players don’t consider you on their level unless they need something. With Tony, it’s like you are just like him.”

A kid. Always a kid. Sayles remembers when they were road roommates at San Diego State:

“One night in a hotel, I was laying in bed in the dark, when I hear some footsteps running down the hallway. All of a sudden my door opens and in runs Tony. He jumps on his bed, and starts jumping up and down on the bed, up and down, up and down.

“I roll over and say ‘Tony, what are you doing?’ He says, ‘I’m bored, man, I’m bored.’ ”

Even today, it seems Gwynn mostly manages to avoid the pains of adulthood.

When he wanted to get together with Boggs before spring training, Boggs suggested some quiet spot in La Jolla for dinner.

“Hey, I’ve got a better idea,” Gwynn said.

A couple of days later, they, their wives and children were running themselves dead at Disneyland.

“Sure, I’m a kid, a big kid,” said Gwynn, who off the field is rarely seen in public. He spends most of his time cocooned in his Poway home, playing with his two children (Anthony, 5, and Anisha, 2), watching his big-screen television and fooling with video games.

“One night, when Tony’s wife (Alicia) and kids went out of town, he wanted us to do something,” Sayles recalled. “Big night. We ended up renting two Bill Cosby movies and spent the night at his house, laughing.”

Said Gwynn: “I’ll grow up sooner or later. But see, when I do, it will make this game harder, and I might not want to play anymore.

“Right now I’m having the time of my life, and I want to keep it that way.”

Perhaps because he considers himself a kid, there is one part of this baseball and charity business that Gwynn finds difficult: Seeing sick children.

He makes all the local children’s hospital rounds, and lists as his most memorable an encounter with a 17-year-old leukemia patient.

In the middle of a recent visit to a home for abused children in Las Vegas, Gwynn stopped and refused to enter any more rooms.

“I can’t go in there anymore,” he told teammates. “This is killing me.”

Yet while he waited in the hall, a couple of children walked out to him. A few minutes later, they had surrounded him, and he eventually accompanied them back into their rooms.

“He later came out onto our bus,” Swanson said, “and all he could say was, ‘We don’t know how lucky we are.’ Over and over.”

Baseball’s nicest superstar?

“Got my vote,” Prilaman said.

“You got it,” said Bob Doty, the visiting clubhouse manager who deals with everyone else in the National League.

“Not even close,” said Booker.