The San Diego Padres have called Petco Park home since 2004, three years after the retirement of the franchise’s most accomplished player: Tony Gwynn. Within the park grounds, there is a statue of Gwynn, listing all of his career statistics and paying homage to the 15-time All-Star. After his career, he was the head coach at San Diego State University for 12 seasons, and also worked as a broadcaster for ESPN and Fox Sports San Diego.
Looking down on the field from the press level one spring day, Gwynn saw a Padres player donning a jersey with his last name on it. It was at that moment when Padres fans were formally introduced to Tony Gwynn Jr. – the major leaguer – after an early-season trade in 2009. In fact, Gwynn broke the news to his son that he was being traded from the Milwaukee Brewers to the San Diego Padres. On the same day, Gwynn Jr. ended up scoring the winning run for the Friars, marking a special moment for the family. Yet he knew the San Diego community long beforehand and was familiar with the Padres’ fanbase.
When the junior Gwynn was young, he accompanied his father at Jack Murphy Stadium and was able to consume the game from a unique vantage point. When he was not at the ballpark, he would either watch the games on television or listen on the radio. As the years passed by, his love of sports broadened to more than just baseball, and he was simultaneously becoming more proficient in its vernacular. Sports media fascinated him.
“I didn’t necessarily know that I would want to do it when I got older,” Gwynn said, “but as I got close to retirement, I knew I wanted to be involved in the game of baseball. I also knew that my knowledge that I had gained over time and just being so interested in all sports could end up in different avenues.”
Gwynn’s father was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007 – his first year of eligibility. Seventy-thousand fans made the trip to Cooperstown, N.Y. and listened as they accepted baseball’s highest honor. Throughout the speech, Gwynn Sr. emphasized various lessons he taught his son and passed onto the sport as a whole regarding work ethic and overcoming challenges. Now, that son is looking to cement his own legacy as a broadcaster and be one of the best in the industry.
While Gwynn Jr. had the chance to interact with broadcast icons including Vin Scully, the conversations took place before becoming fully immersed in sports media. As the son of a superstar athlete, Gwynn was afforded unparalleled access and developed an innate knack for the game. Through interacting and listening to radio voices such as Jon Miller, Gwynn had somewhat of a basis to cultivate his own style; however, it was unbeknownst to “America’s Finest City.”
“I think on the broadcasting side, my baseball internal voice was built on listening to the games on the radio,” Gwynn said. “There wasn’t as much television time as there is now, so I was always intrigued [by] that element.”
Instead, Gwynn started his broadcast career nearly two hours north in Los Angeles as part of the DodgerTalk postgame show on AM 570 LA Sports. After departing the Padres as a player in 2010, Gwynn played two seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team’s archrival.
“In LA, they don’t necessarily want you to sugarcoat it. They want you to be on the team when it’s not doing things specifically,” Gwynn said. “That was initially difficult – when you’re fresh out of the game criticizing dudes you know worked their tail off is not a comfortable place to be. Learning how to manage that, I think, was a huge help starting in that market in particular.”
Aside from determining the best way to discuss the game, Gwynn also learned about the business side of sports media and how to responsibly carry out his role.
“I remember my first time just being too candid about a specific sponsor and then after we went to break, [they] said, ‘Hey, you can’t do that,’” Gwynn remembered. “It was a silly mistake, but it was one that I learned early.”
Following the 2016 season, Gwynn Jr. returned to San Diego and took on a similar role his father had held. The next season, he split his time between FOX Sports San Diego on its pregame and postgame show, and joined Jesse Agler as a color commentator for select games on 94.9 KBZT-FM, an alternative station serving as the team’s flagship home.
The city was recovering from losing its football team to Los Angeles, and others perceived its fans as disloyal. Where many saw a glaring deficiency, Gwynn saw an opportunity to help reshape the sound of sports talk in the area – coinciding with the launch of 97.3 The Fan.
“It’s made it a little bit easier that the folks here in San Diego have to focus really only on one major sports [team] and their college teams,” Gwynn said of the Chargers’ departure. “I think because of that, it’s almost kind of directed everybody’s attention in one direction, whereas when the Chargers were here and you had the Padres, there was always kind of diversions going on.”
Gwynn joined the station from its inception in April 2018 after it reformatted from a talk, comedy and music format, and has been working with Chris Ello in afternoons ever since. As a co-host on Gwynn & Chris, his goal is to tap into the conversation in the area, which spans both locally and nationally. During the baseball season, the Padres are the primary topic, and while some people may think he loathes the offseason, he embraces it and uses it as an opportunity to expand the discussion.
“There was a period of time where everybody was pissed at the Chargers, but everybody also loves football,” Gwynn said. “In some ways, I enjoy that part of the year just as much because doing the analyst side on the radio and talking about it from April to October, I like the change-up. We definitely do our part come the end of baseball season to really show our diversity in terms of our knowledge of sports.”
The natural progression of the program is a fundamental aspect of maintaining the show’s appeal – especially after finishing with a 9.0 share at the top of the most recent ratings book. While ratings and advertising revenue are critical to engendering success, the fiscal markers do not encompass the definition in its entirety.
“When people can turn on the radio and tune in and they can hear a conversation that they would be having with their friends, I think ultimately is just as important as those ratings,” Gwynn said. “They’re one in the same – if you have those types of conversations consistently, you have the ratings that you’re looking for.”
Gwynn was not the full-time radio analyst for Padres games until the start of last season – which have been broadcast on 97.3 The Fan since 2018 – creating a complicated situation involving balancing his commitments with the outlet. In traveling with the team, he needs to prepare for both the program and baseball game every day throughout the season. There is overlap between the two since the Padres are a frequent topic of discussion on the radio show, and Gwynn feels the job became more facile upon finding a rhythm. When he first arrived in San Diego as a broadcaster though, there was somewhat of a learning curve to become acclimated to his new role.
“I think in some ways when I first started out, [I] kind of [had] that kind of just ‘eyes wide open,’ and [I was] so naïve to things that you don’t even necessarily pick up,” Gwynn said. “To me, coming to work and talking [about] sports was just fun.”
The impetus to continue the delicate balance is embedded within his intrinsic enamorment towards sports. Being a former player and the son of a Hall of Famer, he has a deft understanding of all things baseball. Some of these perspectives, however, can be incomprehensible to the average listener, hence why he works at expressing these complex points in a lucid manner. It is something Gwynn’s father was able to discern and accomplish as a player and broadcaster.
“If there’s a gift that I did get from him, it certainly has been being able to explain some of the more nuanced parts of the game in a way that the common man who’s never played can understand,” Gwynn said of his father. “I think that’s important, especially as we get into so many more analytical, data-driven statistics that are difficult to understand if you haven’t played. Part of my job is being able to break those things down and give our fans a way to keep up with the game as it’s evolving right now.”
Gwynn does not consider himself to have an ego on the radio. Even so, he tries not to limit future opportunities on television regularly. He also sees the value in having his radio show syndicated on a national platform, bringing San Diego sports talk to speakers across the nation.
“I genuinely love sports, and I don’t see that changing any time soon,” Gwynn said. “That’s my motivation – I think as long as I continue to have that feeling, I could probably do this job for a very, very, very long time.”
Despite being a former member of the Padres and frequently appearing near the organization, working in sports media has allowed Gwynn to further establish his own identity. Over the years, many baseball fans saw him solely as the son of “Mr. Padre,” diminishing the anomalies that render him unique and a true savant of the game. As a sports radio host and color commentator, he has had the opportunity to routinely speak for himself.
“People got a chance to recognize outside of baseball that I know my stuff when it comes to sports,” Gwynn said. “I think that kind of allowed for there to be a space where people weren’t viewing me as Tony Gwynn’s son, and I think part of that also is the fact that I played eight years in the big leagues. People got a chance to see that I wasn’t my father and [that] I had a personality.”
Even though Gwynn and Agler work on the radio broadcast, they noticed what transpired regarding the team’s television broadcasts. Earlier in the summer, Bally Sports San Diego’s parent company, Diamond Sports Group, neglected to pay the team its media rights fee on schedule. After a month-long grace period without payment, Major League Baseball assumed control of the media rights, seemingly the first example of Diamond Sports Group selectively rejecting a contract under Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
While the scenario merely eschewed the radio broadcast in terms of sheer cume, it epitomizes the fleeting stability of traditional, local broadcasting and makes a search for the best path forward rather ambiguous.
“For a long time now even before I got into radio, people have been telling us that radio was dying – and here we are 10 years later [where] radio’s still going strong,” Gwynn said. “You can make a point that it’s actually gotten stronger in that time. I don’t worry about it as much, [but] certainly as the unfortunate situation with Bally happened, you knew that there could be more listeners.”
Following a 2022 season where the team was just three wins away from a World Series appearance, the Padres have had a frustrating 2023 campaign. The return of Fernando Tatís Jr., who was suspended for using a performance-enhancing drug, along with the acquisition of Xander Bogaerts altered a batting order anchored by Manny Machado, Juan Soto and Jake Cronenworth.
While the lineup is one of the league’s best on paper, it has fallen short of expectations and classified the Padres among the most disappointing teams in the National League. Any quality broadcaster needs to know how to deliver criticism devoid of impetuous attacks, and Gwynn has diligently ensured he stays within those boundaries.
When Gwynn first began playing baseball, there was a stigma pertaining to athletes with asthma, which he suffers from, being able to compete at a high level. By the end of his career, that narrative was silenced – and his son, who also deals with the lung disease, continued to play with that fortitude. Gwynn passed away four years after his Hall of Fame induction following a protracted battle with parotid cancer. It was a devastating moment for the Gwynn family, fans of the San Diego Padres, the baseball community and the world spanning beyond sports.
Once the public learned of his death, they laid flowers in front of his statue behind the ballpark, granting the community a place to mourn and gather. Oftentimes fans at the ballpark use the statue as a meeting place, exuding reverence for Gwynn and cognizance that he is their franchise player. Today, Gwynn Jr. is a national ambassador for the American Lung Association and a member of its leadership board in San Diego, through which he uses his platform to inform others of the significance of lung health.
“I think that is a super important thing, especially for the underserved communities out there,” Gwynn said. “A lot of it is access – when you get the information out to those communities, they can make better choices from there.”
Gwynn is not eligible to join his father in Cooperstown, but he is on a trajectory to be among baseball immortality – something that could, perhaps, come as a future recipient of the distinguished Ford C. Frick Award. The honor is typically bestowed upon a play-by-play announcer, but it does not define the parameters of what it considers to be a broadcaster. Tim McCarver was the last analyst to be given the distinction in 2012, and Gwynn hopes he is not the last.
Heeding his father’s advice from the time he was young, remaining prepared, adaptable and equipped with a fervor for the craft has served Gwynn well. In spite of the success, he resists becoming complacent and yearns to improve with every broadcast whether that is at the ballpark or in the studio. Sports media is continuously getting to know Gwynn, and he is determined to further emerge in the content ecosystem and, ultimately, leave an indelible legacy.
“Wouldn’t that be something to get into the Hall of Fame as an analyst on the baseball side?,” Gwynn said. “I think that’d be pretty cool.”
Derek Futterman is an associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
