San Diego Padres: Kevin Towers Inducted into Friars Hall of Fame

Today, the San Diego Padres elected former GM Kevin Towers into the team’s Hall of Fame. Towers passed away in January at the age of 56 after battling thyroid cancer for nearly two years.

Kevin Towers, the longtime San Diego Padres general manager, was posthumously inducted into the Padres Hall of Fame today, with the formal ceremony scheduled to take place on Saturday, May 12, before the Friars play the St. Louis Cardinals.

Towers grew up in Medford, Oregon and attended Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. After being selected by the Padres in the 1982 MLB Draft, he stayed in the Friars’ system for seven seasons before becoming a coach and then a scout.

After serving as a scout for the team, then for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he became the Padres’ scouting director in 1993. He wouldn’t leave the organization until 2009 when the team let him go after fifteen seasons as GM.

Kevin Towers’ time with the San Diego Padres

Towers oversaw four division championships as GM (’96, ’98, ’05, and ’06), and was the architect of the 1998 National League championship team.

Some of the notable Friars that he had a hand in signing or acquiring were Wally Joyner, Greg Vaughn, Kevin Brown, Ryan Klesko, Adrian Gonzalez, Heath Bell, and Jake Peavy, to name just a few.

After his tenure in San Diego, Towers joined the New York Yankees as a special assignment scout for the 2010 season. After taking the reins of the Arizona Diamondbacks before the 2011 season and seeing them go from 97 wins the season before to 94 in his first as GM.

In his final MLB position, Towers was a scout and special assistant to Cincinnati Reds general manager Walt Jocketty.

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Towers will join Jack McKeon, Ted Williams, Ken Caminiti, Garry Templeton, Benito Santiago, Trevor Hoffman, Dick Williams, Tony Gwynn, Buzzy Bavasi, Jerry Coleman, Dave Winfield, Ray Kroc, Nate Colbert, and Randy Jones as Padres’ Hall of Fame enshrinees.