Best Cards: Tony Gwynn

(This is Best Cards Ever, a never-ending quest to find the single best baseball card of every player.)

About a year ago, a tweet proposed the idea that it was the bottom of the ninth in a tie game with the bases loaded, and you could have any player in baseball history up to bat. Who would you choose?

The answer I saw most often as that question went semi-viral was Tony Gwynn. And that’s just either a fundamental misunderstanding of the baseball situation, or a fundamental misunderstanding of who Tony Gwynn was. The situation posed in the question needs someone to reach base. In short, you could sort the all-time leaders by on-base percentage and you’d be close to an answer. That basically means Ted Williams (.482, first) or Barry Bonds (.444, sixth, but extra credit for being modern) is the answer to your question. Gwynn? He ranks 111th all-time in on-base percentage at .388, percentage points between Dolph Camilli and Joe Mauer.

That’s not a slight on Gwynn! He was an all-time great hitter. But he was an all-time great hitter, not batter. If the tweet question had posed the idea that, I don’t know, there was a runner on second, two outs, down by one, then Gwynn (.338 career batting average, 18th all-time and one of only two players in the top-20 — along with Williams — to have taken the field in the last 80 years) might well be your answer. Strictly as a player we wanted to put the bat to the ball and get on base that way, not many have ever been better, and once you adjust for era and competition, Gwynn might have been the single best “get a hit”-er in baseball history. That’s a heck of a thing, even if it didn’t necessarily make him the guy you would want in a “bases loaded, get on base” situation.

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Tony Gwynn

Career: 1982-2001 (SD)
WAR: 69.2
Hall of Fame: Yep, 2007, with a whopping 97.6% of the vote, 10th-best ever

By the end of his career, Gwynn was kind of a roly-poly dude. Still a hitting machine — he hit .324 in 112 plate appearances in his 2001 swan song at 41 years old, which feels impossible — but we picture him as a fat little bat-swinger, because that’s what we saw of him most often, as cable TV and ESPN and other access proliferated.

But that’s not what Gwynn was for his whole career. This was a dude who, in 1987, stole 56 bases. He had 206 steals in 1984-1989, his age-24 to age-29 seasons. Sure, by the end of his career he more resembled a bowling ball with a bat, but who cares? He was a hitting machine, and hitting machines are great no matter the shape.

(As always, thanks to Check Out My Cards for being able to track these down.)

The worst Tony Gwynn card

2000 Pacific Invincible – Ticket to Stardom #18

You can make your cards vertical. You can make your cards horizontal. Both are fine! My affinity for horizontal cards in what are typically vertical sets is well-documented at this point in this series. What you absolute cannot do, what Pacific does here, is do both. What in the name of vertigo is happening here? Find a horizontal action shot, or forgo the headshot, or something, guys. This is seasickness in cardboard form.

Honorable mention

These aren’t the best of his cards. Sometimes they aren’t even that good. But they need to be mentioned one way or another.

2001 Upper Deck Sweet Spot – Game-Used Bases Level 2 #B2-GRP (Tony Gwynn/Ivan Rodriguez/Rafael Palmeiro)

Again, I don’t make the rules here. But you can’t do this card design and not have the players be a first baseman, a second baseman (maybe a shortstop), and a third baseman. You just aren’t allowed to. I’m sorry.

1997 Upper Deck #492
1997 Upper Deck Shimano #6

So Tony liked fishing, then? I will say that these were the only two cards I could find of him fishing, and they were by the same company in the same year. EXCEPT! The cards depict him in a different hat and a different shirt. So either the Upper Deck company really liked the idea of Tony fishing and did two different shoots of him doing it, or he was actually dressed the same in both photos, and they Photoshopped his hat and shirt to look different in one of the pictures. Either way, this is silly.

(Also, what’s “Shimano”?)

1992 Donruss Triple Play #219

There is no way Tony caught that ball, and y’all know it.

1993 Upper Deck #167

I was 100% set to mock Upper Deck for one of the most obvious errors ever. “C’mon, y’all, that ain’t Tony Gwynn, that’s some guy named Sanders.” Then I clicked on the card and yep, that’s Tony. The back of the card even acknowledges it, with the blurb saying “Gwynn confused onlookers by donning Padres pitcher Scott Sanders’ jersey for a spring training game.” According to a Gaslamp Ball story from a few years ago, it was a simple thing: Gwynn had forgotten his uniform at the hotel and had to wear Sanders’ jersey for his first plate appearance. That’s fine, things happen. But I can’t decide if this was a genius move by Upper Deck or a stupid one. Like, every single person who sees that card is going to assume that’s an error, and who wants to look bad? On the other hand, every single person who sees that card is going to take an extra minute to look at it and figure out what’s going on there, and isn’t taking extra time a good thing? I’m torn here.

1985 Topps #660
1991 Upper Deck Final Edition #97F
1992 Topps Stadium Club #825
1992 Upper Deck #274
1994 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice #122
1996 Upper Deck #450

I don’t remember Tony Gwynn being a super-sunglasses guy. It definitely wasn’t, like, his trademark or anything. But man, did he rock them in cards a bunch. These were just the ones here he was actively wearing the sunglasses and not wearing them on top of his head or something. It’s kind of amazing how sunglasses-y his cards were.

1993-95 Cardtoons #76

Am I missing something here? This is just mean, right? Exaggerating his weight in the main image, then joking like he wants to be super thing in the reflection? Like, is there another way to interpret this that I’m missing? Damn, Cardtoons, that’s cold.

1993 Upper Deck #474 (Gary Sheffield/Phil Plantier/Tony Gwynn/Fred McGriff)
1995 Bowman’s Best – Mirror Image #11 (Brian Hunter/Tony Gwynn)
1996 Select – Team Nucleus #22 (Marc Newfield/Tony Gwynn/Ken Caminiti)
2005 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia – Team Trios #TT-55 (Tony Gwynn/Joe Carter/Brian Lawrence)
2005 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia #TS-51 (Tony Gwynn/Rickey Henderson/Joe Carter/Brian Lawrence/Robert Fick/Dennis Tankersley)
2010 Sportkings Triple Memorabilia #TM-06 (Mark McGwire/Duke Snider/Tony Gwynn)

Card companies have this penchant for coming up with themes that require multiple star players, and then not finding enough star players to fill out the theme. That’s how someone like Phil Plantier or Brian Hunter gets to share card space with a Tony Gwynn or a Gary Sheffield. And then there are the ones where they basically just tossed a bunch of names in a hat and pulled them out at random? What else do Mark McGwire, Duke Snider, and Tony Gwynn have in common?

(Also, in that card with six players, three are pictured on the front and three are on the back, and you can 100% guess who goes where.)

2019 Topps – Faces of the Franchise #FOF-23 (Wil Myers/Tony Gwynn/Dave Winfield)

In the same vein, a hearty LOL at Wil Myers being put on the same level as those other two.

2019 Topps Allen & Ginter’s – Rip Cards #RIP-33

Maybe we don’t put “RIP CARD” on a player who has died? Just a thought.

1995 Topps Stadium Club #475

Do you guys think this is the same big bat from that Kirby Puckett card?

1993 Metz Baking – Food Issue #TOGW

Again, we have the issue of people drawing pictures of ballplayers they have clearly never seen. This is … Harold Reynolds? Maybe Jeffrey Leonard? It definitely ain’t Tony Gwynn.

And now, the top four Tony Gwynn cards of all time.

4. Pacific Omega – Hit Machine 3000 #6

Tony Gwynn never really had what we’d describe as swagger. He wasn’t Rickey Henderson or anything. This is the closest he ever came to stunting on people as far as I can remember. But man, I like it. Shoulda done more of this.

3. 1997 Pinnacle Zenith #2

The Zenith collection was an absolutely gorgeous group of cards, and ones they actually did 8x10s of as well. I don’t think they were super successful, in part (I’m guessing) because of the unwieldiness of the giant cards, and the fact that even the smaller cards were about three times thicker than typical. But man, they were the prettiest card collection. Absolute simplicity on the front, just a picture and the can’t-really-avoid-it card company. The back added more, but backs of cards are like the inside flaps on book jackets. What matters (in this analogy) is the cover. These were so pretty.

2. 1987 Fleer #416

I feel like before this picture was taken, the photographer clearly said to Tony, “You know, you’re only an okay hitter. Not great or anything.” And Tony gave him this face. And it’s wonderful.

1. 2000 Pacific Reflections #16

I don’t remember this subset at all, but a cursory COMC search reveals there were a lot of them, even spanning other sports. Team hat, player and stadium image in the sunglasses. It might well be my favorite insert set of all time. It gives you the team and the player in a way we don’t typically see. So sure, maybe this isn’t Tony Gwynn’s best card because of Tony Gwynn; maybe it’s his best card because a company rocked out an awesome card design. I’m open to that. But this is one of the prettiest set designs I’ve ever seen.