Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn dies at age 54

[Da Coach]

Hall of Fame baseball player Tony Gwynn died today at the age of 54 from complications of cancer.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11091626/hall-famer-tony-gwynn-san-diego-padres-died

Gwynn had just gotten an extension to coach San Diego State for another year, despite his battle with cancer of the salivary glands.-

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/jun/11/tony-gwynn-remain-sdsu-baseball-coach-least-one-mo/

Gwynn finished his career with a career batting average of .338! As of now, there is only 1 Major Leaguer with a batting average over that figure, and yet he averaged .338 over his 20 year career! He won the NL batting title 8 times! Only Ty Cobb's 11 batting titles were more than Gwynn won.


Here are his career stats. We may never see a hitter this good again-

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gwynnto01.shtml

[tornado]

agree - he was an incredibly good, disciplined hitter..

but back in his day after you got into the 2nd half of a ball game - thnigs got easier.....you'd be facing a pitcher whose arm was tiring or if you saw a reliever it was generally a guy who didn't have the armspeed or the skills to be a starter...
but now you face an endless stream hard-throwing, 100mph fastballers - so maintaining that kind of batting average is so much harder.