Late All-Star Voters Save Gwynn, System

It’s the day before the Fourth of July. It is late afternoon. The column is written.

You have taken the opportunity to express incredulity that Tony Gwynn has finished fifth in the balloting among National League outfielders.

You ask if life is fair. You ask if All-Star voting is fair.

You write a preposterous sentence.

Tony Gwynn will be a reserve outfielder for the National League next Tuesday in Toronto.

You write that baseball fans deserve one giant, collective slap on the wrists, or maybe kick in pants, for relegating this man to fifth place among National League outfielders.

You say that putting Tony Gwynn on the bench is like hanging a Rembrandt in the garage, taking a vacation in Pittsburgh or putting a bikini on Roseanne Barr.

Nonsensical.

You ask who counted the votes anyway . . . Jack Clark?

You wonder if the fans do any homework before they cast their ballots. Through most of the voting period, you point out, Gwynn was batting between .360 and .370 and listed among the league leaders in virtually every offensive category.

Grumbling, you note that this is not some heretofore obscure player who happens to be having a fluke of a good year. You cite the fact that Gwynn has already won four batting titles . . . and four Gold Gloves.

You wonder if maybe Tony Gwynn should work to reshape his image.

You see, for all of his accomplishments, both this year and in the past, he went into the final week trailing a .224 hitter who happened to have a higher national profile . . . and, not so coincidentally, the most votes among outfielders. Darryl Strawberry is Mr. Tabloid and Tony Gwynn is Mr. Homebody. Strawberry’s name screams from headlines, not all of them relating to baseball, and Gwynn’s name whispers from box scores.

So you suggest maybe Gwynn should spend a couple hundred thousand on a sports car and race it through Mission Valley at 140 miles per hour . . . preferably at 3:30 a.m. Maybe he should dress like either Rod Stewart or Payne Stewart. Maybe he should charge the pitching mound or, better yet, punch a teammate.

Batting .340 and collecting 200 hits year after year wasn’t getting it done for the guy.

Most people or businesses hire public relations firms to improve their images, but Gwynn didn’t seem to need any of that. He didn’t need his image improved, just changed. I recommended that he spend an off-season running around with Andre Agassi or John McEnroe or Jose Canseco or Mike Tyson or Jim McMahon or Attila the Hun. You know the ilk.

Or maybe he needed to make some guest appearances on national television, and I don’t mean ESPN. He needed to get on Geraldo Rivera and throw a chair into the studio audience. Or at least throw a helmet into the dugout.

I knew that wouldn’t work. Not with Tony Gwynn. OK, what’s available on the Disney Channel?

It was bothering me that he just couldn’t make it in the eyes of the nation’s fans by doing his job better than he has ever done it before. That should have been enough, I fumed, because doing his job better than he has done it means he is darn well doing it better than anyone one else is doing it now.

There was this one little hole in his offense that had to do with not driving in very many runs. This was in part because he had never been asked to drive home runs. His job was to set the table, not clear it.

So he bats third this year and sits here on the morning of the Fourth of July with 46 runs batted in. The season has yet to reach the halfway mark, meaning he has a shot at 100 RBI for the season.

In spite of the year he is having, Gwynn was trailing not only Strawberry but also Andre Dawson, Kevin Mitchell and Bobby Bonilla going into the final week of the balloting.

Being reasonable, I concluded that it is the fans’ right to elect whomever they want to watch. It’s their game. They could vote Shawn Abner into the starting lineup, should they be so inclined.

However, I was begrudging them this right.

And so, late Wednesday afternoon, I checked the wires and felt a little bit like the guy who wrote the Dewey headline. This election had taken a turn. I don’t know where the late precincts were located, but Gwynn had gone from fifth to second and the ballot boxes were closed.

Tony Gwynn would, after all, be in the starting outfield for the National League.

Forget all that advice, Tony. Don’t be like those other guys. Just be yourself, on the field and off the field.

It works.