Bob Nightengale

USA TODAY Sports

SAN DIEGO - It has been two years and 24 days since Tony Gwynn died, but the tears keep flowing and the pain has yet to subside, as Major League Baseball prepares to celebrate the 87th All-Star Game in the home that the San Diego Padres’ greatest player built.

Alicia Gwynn, the widow of the Hall of Famer, sat in her living room recently, wiping the tears streaming down her face. She remembered her husband’s pain during his final two months as he fought salivary gland cancer.

“For me, it was so hard, crying, letting go,” Gwynn told USA TODAY Sports. “When I saw how much pain he was going through, I finally said, ‘Tony, I’m going to be OK.’ I didn’t want him to suffer anymore.

“They wanted to do more treatments, but he didn’t want to do any more. I remember him saying, ‘If I’m dying, doc, I want to go out my way.’ And he did. It just seemed like he was already at peace.

“He wasn’t sad. He didn’t want anybody to feel sorry for him. He was ready to go.”

Gwynn, buried just a couple of miles away from his home, died June 16, 2014. He was 54.

One way to beat Tony Gwynn: Tell him what pitch is coming

John Boggs, his agent and best friend, broke down last week in his San Diego office, remembering watching Gwynn go into a seizure 21/2 weeks before he died and Alicia holding the phone next to Gwynn’s ear two days before Father’s Day. It was the last time they spoke.

“My one regret with Tony,” Boggs said, sobbing, “is I never got the chance to tell him what he meant to me.”

Tony Gwynn Jr., the Gwynns’ only son, who also played Major League Baseball, has four kids of his own now. His last child, and only son, was born 12 days after his father died.

His name is Anthony Keith Gwynn III; they call him Trey.

“I don’t have four kids if I have a boy earlier,” Tony Gwynn Jr. said. “I think it was my dad’s spirit that had our last child be a boy. I was always so against naming my son the third, but after my dad passed, I had to name him after him.”

'I was so stupid'

Barry Bonds, baseball’s career home run king, was often scolded by Gwynn, who told him to be a friendlier person, more cordial to the media, and life would be easier. He didn’t listen.

“He kept telling me to be nice,” Bonds said. “But I was so deep into being controversial, I said the hell with it. It’s sad I did that. I was so stupid.”

Gwynn was unabashed in his anger toward those who used performance-enhancing drugs, unafraid to publicly talk about baseball’s deep, dark problem with steroids and amphetamines, when no one wanted to hear it.

Gwynn was ostracized by veterans, even his own teammates, for speaking out, but he didn’t care, praying that his own teammate, 1996 National League MVP Ken Caminiti, an admitted steroid user, was paying attention.

Caminiti died 10 years before Gwynn, in 2004, of a drug overdose.

Mike Howder, who with Gwynn revolutionized baseball with their videotape technology, perhaps spent more time with Gwynn than anyone outside his family. Howder, with Michael Tompkins as his assistant, was by Gwynn’s side since 1989. They would break down videotape after home and road games with the Padres and then at San Diego State after Gwynn became head coach.

Howder was in Montreal on Aug. 6, 1999, when Gwynn reached the 3,000-hit milestone, watching Gwynn come into the tunnel alone, take a knee, look up, and say, “Dad, we did it.”

The two became inseparable, and shared everything together in those long hours in the video room, including the same addiction: nicotine.

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Howder smoked cigarettes, and Gwynn chewed tobacco, usually 11/2 tins a day of Skoal. Howder finally stopped, listening to his doctor’s advice that he would get cancer within a year if he didn’t stop.

Gwynn refused to listen, still dipping after all of the tumors, seizures and radiation treatments, up until the days he died.

“In his mind, he knew he couldn’t quit,” Howder said. “He was so about routine, and chewing tobacco was too about this routine. We both pretty much knew that with the baseball schedule, we weren’t going to quit.

“I finally got into vaping, using a non-tobacco, and I really tried to get Tony to use one. I really felt that if I could get him to buy into it, it would have help him. It would have made a difference. But as an addict, you need that nicotine.

“I ended up getting five guys to stop chewing tobacco. Unfortunately, Tony wasn’t one of the five.”

This All-Star Game, the first in San Diego in 24 years, was going to be this city’s final chance to celebrate Gwynn’s legacy, reminiscent of the 1999 All-Star Game at Fenway Park in Boston. That’s when Ted Williams was carted to the middle of the field, surrounded and greeted by every single All-Star player, with Gwynn the one to assist Williams to the mound.

This time, it was going to be Gwynn basking in the celebration, with this sleepy city showing their gratitude to Gwynn’s devotion, extolling him for spending his entire career with the Padres and coaching at his alma mater, San Diego State.

Gwynn will be honored Tuesday night by Major League Baseball and the Padres. That it will come posthumously is startling for those who long envisioned the first Midsummer Classic at Petco Park.

“There’s an emptiness in the city now,” said Mark Sweeney, Gwynn’s former teammate, who now works on the Padres’ broadcast crew. “A lot of people still can’t believe he’s gone, and now we ask ourselves what we can do to enhance is legacy.

“We lost (Chargers Hall of Fame linebacker) Junior Seau, and then Tony, and you think of their impact, but it starts with Tony. He was the poster child of this city. He made San Diego proud.

“To be honest, I don’t think this city will ever be the same.”

Kicking the habit

The Gwynn family’s hope is that the game of baseball will never be the same, either.

Chewing tobacco killed Gwynn, the family believes, filing a federal lawsuit two months ago against Altria Group, Inc., the tobacco giant formerly known as Phillip Morris Companies, wanting to make sure that no one else ever suffers the same pain.

“My dad was such a gentleman and great person, and for him not to be here at the All-Star Game in San Diego,” said his daughter, Anisha, whose quiet and introspective personality closely resembles her father, “it’s so hard on all of us. To have something like this take him out of this world, you understand how addictive it is.

“We tried so hard over the years to get him to quit. But as the years went on, we realized it was a lot harder than we ever imagined. It was just so instilled in this game, and people blindly take it, without the repercussions. My dad isn’t here, but it’s our job now, our family’s job, to let people know what they’re getting themselves into.”

Many in the game took notice. Kicking the habit for good, however, is another story.

“When he passed away, I stopped using it,” says San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy, Gwynn’s former teammate, coach and manager with the Padres. “I’ve had a couple of hiccups, but it woke me up.

“It’s a drug, and it’s so hard to get off it, especially in this game. I know Tony believed it killed him.”

Gwynn had a growth removed from his cheek in 2001 and 2007, and was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. He had surgery, only for the cancer to return two years later. And then again in 2013, the cycle of tumors, surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy treatments starting anew. Then, came the seizures. Ultimately, Tony Gwynn Jr. said, there was an inoperable brain tumor.

Gwynn was in and out of the hospital the last two months, but even with the right side of his face paralyzed, taping his right eyes shut to go to sleep, and requiring a walker to leave the house, never did he disclose his suffering.

“It just seemed to happen so fast,” said his brother, Chris Gwynn. “I remember he went into the hospital for tests, they didn’t like the results, they kept him, and within a week he lost his ability to walk. People were taken by surprise, no one really knew how bad it was, how serious it became.

“Really, he didn’t even want me to know. He never once told me the pain he was in, or wanted me to see him that way. He was so proud. He just wanted to make sure his family was OK.

“That was his concern.”

Said Anisha: “My dad didn’t want people to ever remember him as being sick or weak. He wanted him to remember the way they last saw him play.”

Stick figure

And could he ever play.

Gwynn, using a tiny 321/2-inch, 31-ounce bat, was an eight-time batting champion. A lifetime .338 hitter. A 15-time All-Star. Five-time Gold Glove winner. He accumulated 3,141 hits. He hit at least .300 every year but his rookie season, and in his 20-year career, never once struck out more than 40 times in a season.

“There was no way to pitch him,” said former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Jim Leyland, who waved Gwynn home for the winning run from first base at the 1994 All-Star Game. “If we throw him inside, he pulls it down the line for a double. If we throw him outside, he’ll hit it down the other line for a double. I know it sounds crazy, but finally, we said, let’s just pitch him down the middle. Let him make the decision what he wanted to do with it.”

Merv Rettenmund, Gwynn's former hitting coach with the Padres, took this same approach to an extreme when he joined the Atlanta Braves. He told Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone that he had the perfect strategy to stop Gwynn.

"I said, 'Leo, let's just have (Braves catcher) Javy Lopez tell him what's coming. I know Tony. He never wants to know what's coming. If a guy was tipping pitches, Tony didn't want to know. So we'll have Javy tell him whether it's a fastball, curveball, changeup or whatever he's throwing. Tony will hate it.

"We thought about it, but we were afraid the umpire might think something illegal was going on."

Gwynn, who used to have Alicia record his at-bats off TV before lugging around his two VCRs and a TV, was the greatest contact hitter in the game, but was never satisfied. His bread and butter was poking singles between shortstop and third base, calling it the 5.5 hole.

“I remember sitting on the bench one day,” says Rettenmund, “and Tony said, ‘If I just smoke one, I’ll get my confidence back.’

“I said Tony, ‘You’re batting .349.’”

Road warrior

Gwynn rarely hung out with teammates. The game would end, Gwynn talked to the media, showered and headed to his home in Poway or to his hotel room, where he was registered under the alias Anthony Keith.

He’d call Alicia. Then, it was a call to Boggs. And then it was watching videotape, playing video games, or the occasional card game with the fellas, where former teammate Wally Joyner and former GM Kevin Towers can’t ever remember him winning.

“His family meant everything to him,” said Greg Vaughn, perhaps Gwynn’s closest teammate. “I still remember winning the pennant in ’98. We were going to the World Series and everyone was going crazy and spraying champagne and drinking champagne and beer. I vividly remember looking over, the champagne is stinging my eyes, and there’s Tony with Alicia and the kids by the trainer’s room.

“Tony wanted to spend that moment with his family, enjoying it with them. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”

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Gwynn, plagued with knee problems throughout his career, was barely healthy enough to play in the World Series against the New York Yankees. He spent hours in the trainers’ room. It was the first time he had ever been to Yankee Stadium, and he was going to savor it.

Gwynn hit .500. The Padres led every game, but the Yankees swept the Series, their 125th victory sending Gwynn into another titleless winter.

Afraid of flying, Gwynn would retreat into driving, finding sanctuary on the road, often accompanied by the sounds of George Clinton or, later, jazz.

Why, even when Gwynn bought a winter vacation home in Indianapolis in 1993 —yes, Indianapolis — he would insist the family drive in the Chevrolet Astro mini-van. Gwynn would constantly get teased about his choice for vacation homes, but to Gwynn, it was the perfect family city. The kids had never seen snow in San Diego, and this was a chance to have snowball fights, and even get season-tickets for the Indiana Pacers.

“That’s how my dad wanted to be normal,” said Gwynn Jr., who played for his dad at San Diego State. “He bought a place in a Midwestern town where he could go out to dinner, walk the streets, go to a game, and never be noticed. He loved that.”

Really, Gwynn was a self-proclaimed nerd. His favorite night was Tuesday. He and Alicia would make popcorn, grab some cold sodas and watch NCIS.

“One of the highlights of his life,” Alicia said, “was the day Mark Harmon called him, and wished him happy birthday. He was like, ‘Can you believe that?’ And after that, Magic Johnson called him. He was like, ‘Wow, wow, wow. How cool was that?’ He was so excited. He got on the phone, called Boggsy, he called his brother, called his mom. Even though he was in so much pain, just to see his face light up.”

It was May 9, 2014, the last birthday Gwynn celebrated.

Gwynn knew he was dying, and so did his players at San Diego State, where he had coached since 2001. Even when was hardly around their final season, getting updates on their game in the hospital, they would call after each victory, sing the fight song and Gwynn would end the call by telling them how much he loved them.

“You couldn’t pull him from San Diego State,” Alicia said. “He didn’t care about the major leagues or any other job.”

His town

It’s only fitting now that Washington Nationals starter Stephen Strasburg, Gwynn’s prized protege at San Diego State, will be at the All-Star Game. Texas Rangers ace Cole Hamels, who grew up in San Diego worshiping Gwynn, and later became a teammate with his son, made the All-Star Game too. Tony Clark, executive director of the Major League Players Association, who grew up in San Diego and tried to emulate the way Gwynn lived his life, will also be on hand.

“For me,” said Clark, who also played baseball and basketball at San Diego State, “Tony was what I aspired to be. He was a basketball and baseball player in college, a Hall of Fame baseball player, and someone who embodied all that was right about family and our hometown of San Diego.”

There are reminders everywhere — the huge statue of Gwynn beyond the outfield fence at Petco Park, at 19 Tony Gwynn Drive, and a smaller statue at Poway Park, after you follow a stretch of I-15 renamed Tony Gwynn Memorial Highway.

Said Hamels: “When you think of athletes in San Diego, it’s not really looked at as a sports city. It’s not like the East Coast. Really, we had two athletes in San Diego, Tony Gwynn and Junior Seau. The impact they made on the fan base, and a city that isn’t drawn to sports, they left a legacy that’s pretty impressive.

“I just wish we could thank him in person.”

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