Wearing safety goggles and glancing at his watch, Tony Gwynn Jr. waits for the right moment to add hops to a kettle of boiling water and malted barley as he tweaks his craft beer recipe on a two-keg system dwarfed by giant tanks at AleSmith Brewing Co.
Gwynn followed in the footsteps of his famous father in playing at San Diego State and even with the Padres, and now he hopes to hit on something similar to San Diego Pale Ale .394, AleSmith's tribute to the late Hall of Famer.
"That would make me feel fantastic," Gwynn told Bernie Wilson of The Associated Press. "I would like to do something that is equal to my dad. I mean, I couldn't play baseball as equal to him. ... If I could make a beer that people enjoy half as well as they enjoy my dad's, I would be thrilled."
AleSmith's association with the Gwynn family began in the spring of 2014, ostensibly because the elder Gwynn wanted to get back at Tom Seaver. Seaver, as the story goes, brings wine from his vineyard to the Hall of Fame banquet but won't share it with hitters who did well against him. Since Gwynn hit well against pretty much everybody, he didn't get any wine once he became a Hall of Famer.
"Tony said: 'You know what? I'm going to brew a beer and you're not going to get any,' " said Peter Zien, AleSmith's CEO and owner.
Gwynn died of cancer on June 16, 2014.
Ten days earlier, .394 Pale Ale-- named after Gwynn's highest batting average, in the strike-shortened 1994 season -- hit the market. It's been a home run in San Diego and even made it to Cooperstown when Tony's widow, Alicia, brought several cases last year.
It's only natural that the younger Gwynn gives brewing a try. Under Zien's tutelage, he's learning the craft behind craft beer. The .394 Pale Ale is about 6 percent alcohol and Gwynn is looking to brew a session IPA with somewhere around 5 percent alcohol.
A session IPA, Zien and Gwynn explain, is a beer that someone can have several of during a drinking session due to the lower alcohol content.
As Gwynn is finding out, there's a lot that goes into brewing craft beer.
"It's a blend of art and science like nothing else," said Zien, whose beers are distributed in 24 states and six countries.
Gwynn, now part of the Padres' broadcast team, definitely considers himself a beer snob.
"I wasn't around when my dad was making his beer," he said. "The only thing I had seen him drink was Coors Light. So when they initially were telling me he created a beer, in my mind I was like, 'This can't be that good because all I've ever seen him drink was Coors Light.' "
Gwynn would like to have his beer on the market by June.
Getting over the hump
After the Portland Trail Blazers were swept by the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Western Conference playoffs earlier this week, point guard Damian Lillard told ESPN's Chris Haynes he developed an obsession with trying to take down the Warriors.
"You have to be obsessed with that because you know that they're so good that they're going to be there," Lillard said after Monday's 128-103 loss. "That's what you're going to have to get through to get to where you want to get to. That's what it is."
In speaking with the media after the loss, Lillard spoke highly about how well the Warriors play together. He has realized the Trail Blazers must learn to do the same.
"You also got to understand that if you ever want to get out of the West, you're going to have to go through them," Lillard said. "It's always been that way. I think about when the [Detroit] Pistons were just beating up on [Michael] Jordan. [They] were just kicking his butt every year, and he had to get through them if he wanted to get to where he wanted to get to. That's just what it is. [The Warriors are] going to be there. They're going to be there every year. We have to go get better, and come back better as a group if we want to move past them."
Sports quiz
What was Tony Gwynn Jr.'s highest MLB batting average?
Answer
He hit .270 with the San Diego Padres in 2009.
Sports on 04/28/2017