Baseball Suffers Big Loss With Passing Of Gwynn and Zimmer

Over the past two weeks, the world of professional baseball has taken a major hit. It has nothing really to do with on the field, but more so it's personality off the field. They had smiles that could light up a room. Their laughs and personalities were infectious. Within the span of a week, baseball lost two of its greatest personalities and ambassadors in Don Zimmer, who was 73, and Tony Gwynn, who was 54. The world of baseball suffered a great loss in terms of their personalities, their gentle modesty and their sense of responsibility to act like big leaguers, as well as for their accomplishments.

Don Zimmer had a decent career as a player, spending 12 years in the big leagues as a Third Baseman, Second Baseman and Shortstop. He may not have been the best hitter in the league, but was a good enough ball player to be able to hang around for 12 years with the Dodgers, Senators, Reds and Mets. He played in the big leagues for years after beanings and cranial surgeries that would have ended the careers of others. He was tough. But everyone also knew that he was soft-hearted underneath, which in his case was about a hundredth of an inch below the surface. Zimmer knew the game very well, which combined with the warmth that most people knew, was parlayed very well into his second career in the game. Most people knew him for his days as a manager and bench coach in the big leagues.

Zimmer's first two coaching jobs were with the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres. After being fired by the Padres in 1973, Zimmer took over as the manager of the Boston Red Sox until 1981. That was the time when he really established himself as a great coach in this game, despite the fact that Boston had that historic collapse in 1978. So after his time in Boston, he moved on to manage the Texas Rangers for a couple of seasons. He then bounced around to a few other organizations, including the Cubs and Rockies, before really settling down as bench coach under Joe Torre and the New York Yankees. During his time in the Bronx, Zimmer found his first taste of sustained success since he was in charge of the Red Sox in the late 70's.

During his managing days, Zimmer still had the passion and fire as he had as a player, and he also made guys feel very welcome on his ball club. After losses, his office felt like a postmortem, a real one, because he took every defeat hard and personally. But the next day, at the batting cage, he’d say, “Whadaya need?” to a kid reporter or quietly work the Red Sox clubhouse to energize a slumping team (Washington Post). That's just the way Zimmer was. Sure there were times where you were left wnadering about some of his decisions, like the time he charged at Pedro Martinez during the famed 2003 brawl between the Yankees and Red Sox, But then, a few minutes later, Zimmer would be laughing and smiling and making light of the whole situation. That's just the way he was. Zimmer had a passion for the game that was undeniable, you could just see in his face his love for the game, and love for life as well. It was infectious.

The same thing can be said for Tony Gwynn, who is, in my book, the best pure hitter in this generation. He turned hitting into an art form, becoming one of the first guys in the big leagues to really use video tape to study his swing and use it to his advantage. No one in baseball studied videotape more exhaustively than Gwynn, who may have started the trend toward film study. The batting cage was his research facility. His career average of .338 is the highest since Ted Williams. He won eight batting titles and five Gold Gloves in right field. He stole 319 bases and threw out runners. On the field, as a pure hitter, there are very few guys in history that can come close to what Gwynn was able to do with a bat. He may not have hit with a lot of power, he hit double digit home runs just five times in his career, but the guy could hit to all fields and make any pitcher look foolish.

There was more to Gwynn than just his ability to hit and play the game. His trademark within the game was his high-pitched giggle. He had this laugh that was so infectious you couldn't help but start to laugh right along with him. Gwynn never took the game too seriously, he always seemed like he was having fun on a baseball diamond. He loved the game, and life for that matter, all the same.

It’s because of people like Zimmer and Gwynn, and hundreds of others with similar qualities, though their warmth of spirit may not be writ quite as large, that so many people have spent a lifetime around the game, still love it and don’t grow tired of it or angry at it just because it has all the flaws of other institutions. The world can use all the Gwynns and Zimmers it can get. Baseball doesn’t create them, but it husbands and appreciates them. That’s why there are, and will continue to be, many more like them, though never quite the same.