Mad Skills and Short Shorts

Opening Day has come and gone.  The A's won.  The Padres lost.  And I'm late to the party again.

But this was a card I wanted to show off a few months ago...

1987 Donruss Opening Day #146

It was originally distributed in a factory set with two hundred seventy-one other cards and one Roberto Clemente puzzle card that was housed in a box that looks like this:

The front design is identical as the flagship release... with the exception of the plum colored borders. 

The back recaps Gwynn's performance on Opening Day back in 1987 against the San Francisco Giants when he went 1 for 4 in a Padres loss.  The loss was the fourth Opening Day loss in a row that happened to coincide with Gwynn's first four Opening Day starts.

He went on to start eighteen straight Opening Day games... which is a pretty cool feat.  In those games he collected 21 hits in 67 at bats... which is about 25 points under his career .338 batting average.

Unfortunately... the Padres only won five of those Opening Day games during the Gwynn Era (1984 to 2001).

Okay... that's sad and depressing.  Let's move onto something a little more positive.  By the time this post is published, Gwynn's alma mater... San Diego State University will be in the midst of facing off against Florida Atlantic University in the first game of the Final Four.

Back in the late 70's and early 80's... Gwynn was a two-sport athlete for them.  Most of you  know about his hall of fame career in baseball, but according to SI, he had little intention of pursuing a career on the diamond.  He didn't even play baseball his freshman year at SDSU, but he did finish with a career .399 batting average with the Aztecs.

By the time his basketball and baseball tenure at SDSU was over, he was the only player in conference history to make the All-WAC team in two different sports.  And on June 9th, 1981 he was drafted by both the San Diego Padres (3rd Round) and San Diego Clippers (10th Round).

I've amassed a respectable Tony Gwynn PC, but only two of them feature him wearing those old school short shorts.  The first one is a custom that Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown sent me almost a decade ago:

And here's my latest addition to my Gwynn basketball collection:

2012-13 Fleer Retro (1997-98 Z-Force Rave) #Z-23 (065/399)

I purchased this card up off of COMC for $3.25 back in the heart of the pandemic.

I've tried to track down a few other Gwynn basketball cards for my collection... but so far none have fallen into my price range.  Not sure that will happen anytime soon if SDSU end up being crowned the 2023 NCAA Men's Basketball Champions.

In the meantime... if you'd like to see a much more impressive collection, head over to Gavin's blog.

Go A's!  Go Padres... and go Aztecs!

Happy Saturday and sayonara!