Dave Winfield

1951-

American baseball player

Baseball player Dave Winfield is one of only a handful of players to achieve 3,000 hits and 400 home runs in his career, joining other Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson , and Carl Yaztrzemski. Winfield also won seven Gold Glove awards for his outfield skills during his twenty-two-season career. A 6'6", 220 lb. giant at the plate, he ranks among the top twenty all-time leaders in home runs, extra bases, and runs batted in. He remains the only athlete to be drafted in college by pro baseball, basketball, and football clubs. He became the first professional athlete to form a charitable organization when he founded the David M. Winfield Foundation in 1977 to help inner-city children.

Close Family

David Mark Winfield was born October 3, 1951, the son of Frank Winfield, a waiter on passenger trains, and Arline Winfield, a public school employee. His parents separated when Dave was three, and his mother raised him and his brother, Steve, alone. They lived in a black community in St. Paul, Minnesota. The three were a very closely knit family, and the boys never strayed farther than a nearby playground. There, director Bill Peterson, who was white, encouraged the neighborhood children to play baseball and basketball. Winfield later said of Peterson, "He gave more to that community than anyone I know. To me … he was coach, friend, father, all rolled into one."

Small for his age, Dave did not try out for the baseball team at St. Paul's Central High School until his junior year. A tremendous growth spurt helped him achieve All-City and All-State honors in both baseball and basketball by his senior year, and after graduation he was offered a scholarship to the University of Minnesota. He continued to live at home and majored in political science and black studies. During his freshman year, he was arrested as an accomplice in the theft of a snowblower from a store. When his mother came to escort him from an overnight stay in jail, she was crying, and Winfield was ashamed and remorseful that he had hurt her. He remained on probation throughout college.

Blossoming Sports Career

At the University of Minnesota, Winfield's career in sports began to blossom. As a sophomore, he was a starting pitcher who won eight out of eleven outings. In his junior year he moved to the outfield and played both baseball and basketball. He pitched again during his senior year and hit .385. The Minnesota Gophers won both the Big Ten basketball and the Big Ten baseball championships during Winfield's senior year. He was named Most Valuable Player in the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament and received collegiate All-American honors.

On graduation, in 1973, Winfield was drafted by the San Diego Padres baseball team, the Atlanta Hawks and

the Utah Stars basketball teams, and the pro football team Minnesota Vikings, even though he had never played football in college. He chose the Padres and received a $50,000 signing bonus plus $18,000 a year in salary. At San Diego, he gave up pitching and became an outfielder. His batting was both brilliant and lagging during his rookie years. With consistent coaching, however, by 1978 he batted .308 and was named team captain. He also played his second All-Star game, and in 1979 he won his first Gold Glove award.

Winfield Foundation

In 1977, Winfield established a charitable foundation designed to mentor and guide inner-city youths, much as Peterson had done for him and his brother. The David M. Winfield Foundation has since expanded to include health and nutrition, literacy, sports and fitness programs, community holiday celebrations, and a drug abuse prevention program. Although many sports figures have since become involved in charity work, Winfield was the first to do so when he founded his organization during the 1970s.

Difficult Decade with the Yankees

In 1978, Winfield met the aggressive Albert S. Frohman, a retired businessman who would become his agent. Frohman encouraged Winfield to leave the Padres and move up to the New York Yankees. He managed to get Winfield a ten-year contract with the Yankees, a $1 million signing bonus and regular contributions to the Winfield Foundation. The deal also included a cost-ofliving pay increase, which Yankee owner George Steinbrenner later said he had not fully understood at the time of the contract. The deal was signed on December 15, 1980. Things seemed to go wrong from the time Winfield signed it.

Unhappy with the costly contract, Steinbrenner began to insult Winfield in the media. When he failed to perform well in the 1981 World Series, Steinbrenner called him "Mr. May," in contrast to former Yankee Reggie Jackson , whose World Series game hits were so outstanding he had earned the nickname "Mr. October." Steinbrenner also stopped making his agreed-on contributions to the Winfield Foundation, but Winfield sued his boss to get the money owed the organization.

Chronology

In addition to these actions, Steinbrenner tried several times to trade Winfield, but his contract gave him the ability to veto the trades. Managers and coaches were fearful of praising Winfield's performance in the media, believing it would anger Steinbrenner. The fans, however, were pleased with the fact that Winfield got at least 100 runs batted in every year for five years. He was the first to do so since Joe DiMaggio . Winfield's struggle later came out in his autobiography, Winfield: A Player's Life, which is said to have infuriated Steinbrenner.

In addition to troubles with his boss and the team, Winfield faced personal assaults during the Yankee years as well. In the mid-1980s a woman took him to court for support of her daughter, of whom Winfield did not deny paternity. He later came to establish a good relationship with the girl. In 1985, another woman sued Winfield, claiming he had given her venereal disease; this was settled out of court. Around the same time, an investigation was launched into the Winfield Foundation's finances, for alleged wrongdoing.

Through the troubles, Winfield continued to play his best baseball, batting .322—the fourth highest in the American League—in 1988. Rarely succumbing to injury, Winfield in 1989 had surgery for a herniated disk in his back and missed the entire baseball season. The following year, after a decade with the Yankees, he was traded to the Anaheim, California, Angels.

A New Lease on His Career

Winfield did well with the Angels, leading the team in runs batted in and batting .290. Sporting News named him "Comeback Player of the Year." In early 1992 he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays as a free agent. In Game Six of the 1992 World Series, with the score tied 2-2, men on first and second and two outs, Winfield hit a double down the third base line, bringing two men home and helping Toronto to a 4-3 victory over the Atlanta Braves, Toronto's first ever World Series championship. Winfield told Sports Illustrated that if his career had ended before Toronto, he "wouldn't have been really happy" with what baseball had dealt him. "I would have had no fulfillment, no sense of equity, no fairness," he said. "I feel a whole lot better now about the way the things have turned out."

In 1993, Winfield signed with the Minnesota Twins, returning home for a time. There he achieved his 3,000th hit. He played forty-six games for the Cleveland Indians in 1995 but retired as a player the following year.

Winfield was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001, his first year of eligibility for the honor. He chose to wear the San Diego Padres cap for his likeness on the enshrinement plaque. In his acceptance speech, he acknowledged Jackie Robinson , the first black player in the major leagues, for making a career in baseball possible for African Americans. He also had a word for young people: "Life and baseball are littered with all kinds of obstacles and problems. You have to learn how to overcome them to be successful."

Career Statistics

Dave Winfield remained a calm, focused player throughout his career, in spite of numerous scandals and difficulties. In 1991, with the Anaheim Angels, he had the first three-home run game of his career. Surprisingly free of injuries throughout his twenty-two seasons in baseball, he was the oldest player ever to have 100 runs in a season, at age forty-one, with the Toronto Blue Jays. In addition to his record-breaking playing, Winfield has been a generous and caring member of society and one who has passed on the gift of guidance in youth through the Winfield Foundation.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Address: Dave Winfield, c/o San Diego Padres, P.O. Box 122000, San Diego, CA 92112-2000. Phone: 619-881-6500 or 888-MY PADRES. Email: [email protected]. Online: http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY WINFIELD:

(With Eric Swenson) Turn It Around!: There's No Room Here for Drugs, Paperjacks, 1987.

(With Tom Parker) Winfield: A Player's Life, Norton, 1988.

(With Eric Swenson) The Complete Baseball Player, Avon Books, 1990.

Awards and Accomplishments

Where Is He Now?

Soon after retirement, Dave Winfield signed on as a baseball analyst for FOX-TV sports, in a show that premiered June 1, 1996. This position allowed him to remain close to baseball. In 1999 he and his wife, Tonya, then the parents of four-year-old twins, sold their 5,000-square-foot home in a posh section of Los Angeles and bought a 9,000-square-foot home in the same section. He had also invested in Burger King restaurants and owned some fifteen franchises. In 1998 he opened a company specializing in exterior lighting for commercial buildings. In 2002, Winfield returned to his original team, the San Diego Padres, as vice president/senior advisor, a position in which he handles business, marketing, and player development for the team.

Ask Dave: Dave Winfield Answers Kids'Questions about Baseball and Life, Andrews and McMeel, 1994.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Contemporary Black Biography. Volume 5. Detroit: Gale Group, 1993.

Periodicals

"Dave Winfield Is New Padres Vice President." Jet (March 11, 2002): 53.

"Dave Winfield Named Baseball Program Analyst on FOX-TV." Jet (April 1, 1996): 46.

"Ex-Yankees Slugger Dave Winfield Selling Home and Buying Bigger One in L.A.'s Beverly Crest." Jet (March 29, 1999): 57.

"Winfield, Puckett Head Baseball's Class of 2001 Hall of Fame Inductees." Jet (August 20, 2001): 52.

Other

Baseball-Reference.com. "Dave Winfield." http://www.baseball-reference.com/ (November 1, 2002).

CBS SportsLine.com. "Dave Winfield Bio." http://CBS.SportsLine.com/ (August 5, 2001).

Poole, Tracy. "Dave Winfield at a Glance." Knight-Ridder News Service. (January 3, 1994).

San Diego Padres Official Web Site. http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/ (November 1, 2002).

Sketch by Ann H. Shurgin