I will never forget how much coach Gwynn cared for his players.

He loved his baseball family and it showed in so many ways.

Every day before practice he would sit in the dugout and wait for guys to come down the tunnel from our clubhouse.

That time was not to go over fundamentals, it rarely had relevance to baseball at all.

Instead, he would ask you how your family was doing, about school and my favorite, he would ask me how the waves were at the beach.

He would make sure to find time every day to simply talk to his players and develop personal relationships with them.

The team would meet in the dugout before practice every day, and two things were always said at the end of each meeting before we went to go warm-up: “Does anyone have any questions?” and “Let’s go to work.”

Coach Gwynn cared about us, he made sure we respected the game and did things right. We knew he loved us, and we loved him.