He Works So Hard to Make It Look Easy

It is 2 p.m. on a broiling summer day in San Diego. It’s a great day to catch a wave off Black’s Beach, to catch up on your reading at Pacific Beach or to catch some fish off Imperial Beach.

The last place you’d want to be, if it weren’t absolutely necessary, is the sizzling, dusty field of Qualcomm Stadium. And because since it’s still more than five hours until game time for the San Diego Padres, there is no need to be there.

Except for one man.

He’s running, from first base to second, then back to first; from the right-field line to center, then back to right.

Some rookie trying to make the club?

No, just the most secure man on the team.

Want to know why Tony Gwynn, whose body looks as if he spends more time in the refrigerator than in the gym, was able to become the 21st player in major league history to collect 3,000 hits?

Along with his natural skill comes a worth ethic that should put lesser players to shame. Gwynn is not only the first man out there every day, running, but the last man to put aside the videotapes each night.

The results speak for themselves.

But to truly appreciate how good Gwynn is, listen to what some say about facing the 18-year veteran with the easygoing personality and the hard-driving swing:

* Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan: “Gwynn [along with Rod Carew] had the best hand-eye coordination of any batter I ever faced. If you threw him a breaking ball in, he’d pull it. If you threw him a fastball away, he’d take it to left field.

“He was a real challenge because he didn’t have a weakness. I tried to change speeds, but he had a real feel for what the pitcher was going to throw. I always felt very good when I got him out. I felt I had earned it.”

* Greg Maddux, four-time Cy Young Award winner of the Atlanta Braves: “He’s easily the toughest hitter for me. I can’t think of anyone who hits me harder. He handles the pitch away as well as anybody, and he’s able to stay inside the ball when the pitch is in. His holes are just very small, and we have two different versions of the strike zone when we face each other. He feels he doesn’t get enough, and I think he gets too much.

“The goal is to face him with two out and no one on base because he’s one of the best at putting a ball in play and putting it in play hard.”

* Knuckleballer Tom Candiotti: “One of the things that separates Tony is that he’s able to recognize a pitch so much quicker than other guys. He also has such good command of the strike zone, and he’s up there wanting to hit. He’s not looking to walk.

“Of course, there was never much of a surprise with what I was going to throw him. I’d mix in a fastball or curve occasionally, but I basically threw him knuckleballs, like I threw everybody else.

“The funny thing is that my first year with the Dodgers, I don’t think he got a hit off me, and the next year I don’t think I got him out. He had obviously done his homework.”

* Houston Astro Manager Larry Dierker: “I confronted guys like Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. They could do more damage than Tony, but if you hit your spots, you knew you could get them out. I was never as uncomfortable pitching to those guys as I was when Tony was at bat.”

Perhaps no story better illustrates Gwynn’s grasp of hitting than the one San Diego third-base coach Tim Flannery recently told the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1996, a Padre-Cincinnati game was suspended with Gwynn at the plate against Derek Lilliquist. The count on Gwynn was 2-and-1.

It’s tough enough for a pitcher to face Gwynn when the Padre outfielder has a few seconds between pitches to think. Give him all night and it’s like giving a student an open-book quiz.

After considering the options, Gwynn decided Lilliquist would start him off the next day with an outside slider. And the left-handed hitting Gwynn figured he would line the pitch into left-center.

Next day, there was the outside slider.

And there was the base hit to left-center.

Gwynn has been doing that sort of thing with sliders and every other kind of pitch since July 19, 1982, when he got his first big league hit against Sid Monge of the Philadelphia Phillies.

It was a double and, as Gwynn trotted into second base, the Phillie first baseman, trailing on the play, came up behind Gwynn.

Fellow by the name of Pete Rose.

“Congratulations,” Rose said to Gwynn. “But don’t catch me in one night.”

That won’t ever happen. At 39, Gwynn is too far behind Rose, who had 4,256 hits, to seriously think of catching him. But if he can play a few more years, Gwynn should crack the top 10 by surpassing Willie Mays at 3,283.

It’s tougher now for Gwynn because of his many leg injuries and the waistline of a man pushing middle age.

“I don’t think there has been any falloff except in foot speed,” Dierker said. “He can’t bunt and he doesn’t get any leg hits and that affects the total package. If you are talking about 10 or 15 fewer hits a year, that is a considerable amount of average.”

It may be hard to envision now, but Gwynn was an excellent basketball player in college, so good that he still holds the San Diego State assist record and was a 10th-round pick of the then-San Diego Clippers.

Gwynn was so focused on basketball in college that he didn’t even go out for baseball. But Jim Dietz, the baseball coach, having heard of Gwynn’s hitting prowess, persuaded him to suit up.

All Gwynn had was one day of batting practice before the Aztecs were scheduled to play a doubleheader. Gwynn went five for eight in the two games.

“He never got out of the lineup again,” Dietz said.

And, of course, Gwynn went on to a career that includes eight batting titles, tying him with Honus Wagner for the National League record. He is bidding for his 17th consecutive season of hitting .300 or better, which would also tie him with Wagner behind only Ty Cobb in major league history.

But the Gwynn people who know him talk most about is the person, not the hitter.

“I’ve had players who were All-Americans one year and All-American jerks the next,” Dietz said. “But Tony was never that way.”

Gwynn has maintained his ties to both his alma mater and his city, refusing to leave the Padres even during the bleak years when he could have won pennants and earned bigger paychecks elsewhere.

The Aztecs play in Tony Gwynn Stadium and he is always available, according to Athletic Director Rick Bay, to lend his name, his influence or his expertise when asked.

“If you didn’t know he was a baseball star, you wouldn’t learn that from meeting him,” Bay said.

And if you didn’t know how hard he worked, you wouldn’t know unless you got out to Qualcomm Stadium at 2 p.m.

Times staff writer Ross Newhan contributed to this story.