Tony Gwynn Project

As I have mentioned in a post or two previously, Tony Gwynn is my all time favorite player and a major icon in the lexicon of San Diego sports.  He often appeared in the community, and as such, I was able to gather a bit of sports memorabilia from the man.  I have two baseballs signed, two identical 8x10's, and a throwback 1984 Padres jersey he signed for me with his 3141 inscription (which is his hit total).  My wife and I decided to have some of my items put together as a big montage as part of a nice shadowbox we can display on the way up to my sports memorabilia man cave.  I wanted to use the jersey as the centerpiece, one of the 8x10's and the 1998 World Series ball.  I decided against using the HOF 07 ball he signed for me because I preferred to keep it in my baseball Hall of Famer case, of which I currently have 31 signed baseballs in.  I took my items in to Hobby Lobby (religious nuttiness aside), brainstormed with my go to guy for framing, and they came up with a finished piece that in my estimation looks outstanding.  It took just under three weeks, and cost some money, but the final product is definitely worthy of the time and money.  Here are some photos;

It's hard to tell, but the color is actually the Padres brown matching the jersey, the lighting made it tough to capture it on a photo.

I included the above photo to show the depth of the box.  The framers actually had to take two separate customized shadow box frames and put them together for it to work.  It also allowed for them to create the depth for the baseball to sit in some space.

Hopefully I'll be updating this blog soon with some new items I am actually trying to get signed through the mail, which is something I've not done since I was a young kid.  I stumbled across an informative website which tells which players in all sports are good about signing through the mail, and how to go about doing it.  We will see how it works out in the end.