Kirk Kenney: Padres fan’s allegiance stronger than ever, even after decades in Cubs Country

A pitcher’s earned-run average is calculated by multiplying the total number of earned runs allowed by nine, then dividing by the total number of innings pitched.

Tommy Cronk could calculate an ERA when he was 4 years old.

“He’s a math genius,” Tommy’s sister Natalie says. “We knew that he was well beyond any of us in math.“

I learned this first-hand in the late 1970s while sitting at the top of our driveway on a cul-de-sac in La Mesa. Each afternoon I would fold copies of The Tribune before delivering around the neighborhood. Tommy, the youngest of 12 siblings, lived three houses down. He frequently wandered over to sit and talk.

The conversation, inevitably, centered around the Padres. The team wasn’t very good, of course, but that didn’t matter.

You don’t think about it in the moment, but that is where allegiance and loyalty are born.

Those driveway conversations lasted only a year or two. I went to college. Tommy went to kindergarten.

Tommy’s love of baseball and the Padres bloomed within a couple of years, when an outfielder out of San Diego State joined the team.

“I’ve just been a baseball guy my whole life,” Tommy (he goes by Tom now) said Tuesday. “Playing on the cul-de-sac. We had the bases painted on the blacktop in the street …. A big part of it was Tony Gwynn. He was always my favorite.

“It’s 1984 and we’re ecstatic and he was the guy. … I remember listening to KFMB radio and Jerry Coleman, ‘You can hang a star on that, baby!’ Back then, you’re reading the box scores every morning.”

Tommy’s parents split up in the early 1980s and he moved with his mom to Iowa in 1985. Four decades later, Tom is still there, now a teacher and coach with a wife and three kids. Iowa is Cubs Country, due in part to the state’s geographical proximity to Chicago. It’s also home to the Triple-A Iowa Cubs.

Tom remains a rabid Padres fan and holds Gwynn in the highest regard.

“You never forget where you came from and then you stay loyal, right?” he said.

On Gwynn: “I loved the way he played. I loved how he hit. I loved how he talked and just smiled all the time and laughed. He just seemed like one of the happiest people, and in a lot of ways I think I’m that way. He was the star and you gravitate toward that. Trevor Hoffman is the other one that stuck with me. … I will say now I like Fernando Tatis, Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill.”

On the Cubs fever: “It’s ridiculous. You want to know what the crazy thing is? We watch the Padres on MLB.TV. We are blacked out of six places: Cubs, Cardinals, White Sox, Twins, Royals, Brewers. It makes me so mad. We’re literally four hours from all of them, and I get blacked out. Most places it’s one team because you have one market. Six of them here.”

On such occasions, Tom goes old-school and listens on the radio.

Road trip to Wrigley

Tom is a teacher at Iowa City Liberty High School. He had Game 1 of the series on his laptop during class.

His family told him to take Wednesday off from school. They surprised him in the morning with a trip to Wrigley Field for Game 2. Ten members of the family, including sister Natalie and brother Dennis, made the four-hour drive from Iowa City to Chicago.

Natalie got up early Saturday morning to purchase the tickets. She also ordered 10 Padres jerseys circa 1984,  with a Gwynn 19 on the back and RAK on the sleeve, for the traveling party.

“Everything is 19,” Natalie says. “Everything. There’s all this emotional connection to Tony Gwynn as a dad and a role model. I think Tom was 7 when he became totally enamored with Tony Gwynn, specifically. Our whole lives are Tony Gwynn. His kids are 12, 14 and 16, and they all know who Tony Gwynn is. When my brother Cliff did the intro at Tom’s wedding, his whole thing was about Tom and Tony Gwynn.

“My dad died when Tom was 9. He literally substituted Tony Gwynn as a father figure. I watched it happen, substituting the guy he believed Tony Gwynn to be for his dad. To know Tom is to love Tony Gwynn. That’s just the deal.”

Chance meeting

The jerseys remind Natalie of the time she bumped into Tony Gwynn wearing the original.

It was the fall of 1983, as near as they can figure. Natalie and Tom were at Grossmont College, where Dennis had a youth soccer game.

Natalie didn’t know much about baseball. She did know Tom loved the Padres and Gwynn was his favorite player.

“Our parents separated when I was 4 and Tom was barely 6 months old,” Natalie said. “Tom looked to sports to fill in some gaps and somehow became enamored with Tony because Tony represented everything that my brother thought a man should be and my dad was.

“I saw a man in a Padres uniform with Gwynn on the back of his shirt, and I knew who he was. I ran up to him and asked him for an autograph — not for me, but for my little brother.

“I looked everywhere for Tom, but he was running around playing and missing this moment. Tony patiently waited to see if I could find him and then finally autographed a note. And then I remember him saying, ‘Do you want one for yourself?’ I was like, ‘OK, I have no idea who you are but I know what you mean to my brother.”

Natalie frowned when she looked at her autograph. Gwynn misspelled her name.

“Of course, being a precocious child, I told him he spelled my name incorrectly,” she said.

So Gwynn signed another autograph and misspelled her name again. On the third try, Gwynn had Natalie spell out her name slowly, letter by letter.

“As I was walking away after thanking him, Tony yelled out, ‘Hey, Natalie, N-A-T-A-L-I-E,” she said. “With a smile, he walked off. I felt so special. I shared that story with my dad and brothers immediately after. Tony has been Tom’s hero ever since.”

Setting an example

Tom played catcher at Iowa City West High School, then became a volunteer coach at the school. He eventually became an assistant coach and remained on the staff for more than two decades. When Iowa City Liberty High School opened five miles away, Tom got an opportunity to be a head coach. His proudest moment was leading the team to the state tournament.

The Iowa City Press-Citizen featured Tom in a story earlier this year for the adaptive P.E. class he teaches in which he helped a student with impaired motor skills participate. Tom put the student together with a robotics student who created assistive technology, allowing her to “kick” a ball or “toss” a balloon through the use of a device called Eyegaze.

“I describe Tom as the best guy I know, and I can’t believe that he is my brother,” Natalie said. “Who gets to say that about their sibling?”

Keeping the faith

Tom could barely sit still during Wednesday’s game, even after the Padres took a 1-0 lead in the first inning.

When a Cubs player hit a deep fly to the outfield that was gloved just a few feet from the wall, Tom texted: “Heart jumped on that one.”

“Need Manny here,” he texted in the third inning before Machado ended the inning with a fly out to right field.

When the Cubs got two runners on with two outs in the fourth and the Padres went to the bullpen: “Uggh! Worried now. The atmosphere is electric. Need to settle them down.” Reliever Adrián Morejón got Pete Crow-Armstrong on a groundout to first base to end the threat.

Machado stepped to the plate again in the fifth inning with Tatis on second base and launched a pitch into the left-field bleachers. “CRUSHED!!! Let’s Gooooo!” Tom texted. “Can’t believe they pitched to him there with a base open.”

He would bite his nails to the nubs over the final four innings until the Padres turned a game-ending double play to nail down the 3-0 victory.

“Unbelievable day,” Tom texted after the final out. “Still just ecstatic about how everything happens. So surreal.”