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Next stop: Cooperstown Winfield gets 'big call' from baseball's Hall of Fame
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Dave Winfield made the right choice. Drafted by teams in major league baseball, the NFL, NBA and old ABA, he picked the sport he first played as an 8-year-old in St. Paul, Minn. "I just had a love for the game," he said Tuesday after being elected to the baseball Hall of Fame on his first try. "Every year I played it professionally, it was the same way." Winfield was listed on 435 of 515 ballots -- 387 were needed for election -- in voting by 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He'll enter the Hall in August with former Minnesota Twins teammate Kirby Puckett, who was picked on 423. "I'm honored, I'm humbled," Winfield said inside the gated Bel-Air community where he lives with his wife, Tonya, and their 6-year-old twins. "I owe a debt of gratitude to a lot of people that made contributions to my career and my life," he said. A multisport standout at the University of Minnesota, Winfield was drafted by the San Diego Padres, the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL, the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, and the Utah Stars of the now-defunct ABA.
"I really didn't have any doubts that it was the wrong choice," he said of baseball. "Football wasn't a consideration. You see what happens to those guys. They're laughing one week and they're on crutches the next." Now 49, Winfield was a pitcher in college, but the Padres wanted him to play every day, so he became an outfielder. "They gave me my opportunity," he said. Winfield played for six teams, but spent his longest time with the New York Yankees. One of baseball's first players to sign a long-term, multimillion dollar contract, Winfield had a long-running feud with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who sarcastically labeled him "Mr. May." They've since patched up their differences. "I would think that George Steinbrenner would feel good for me today because this is an acknowledgment and recognition of what I did my entire career," he said. Winfield never spent a day in the minor leagues and became a 12-time All-Star. He won five Gold Gloves in the outfield, but those didn't come easily. "My defense was bad when I started. I'm not going to lie, that's why I led the league in errors," he said. Winfield's 3,000th hit in 1993 was an RBI single off Dennis Eckersley that drove in Puckett. Winfield finished his career with 3,110 hits and 465 home runs. "One thing that I wanted to do was knock in those runs, be an RBI guy," he said. "I was consistent doing that all the time." Overall, Winfield batted .283 with 1,833 RBIs. He played from 1973-95, and returned from back surgery that sidelined for the entire 1989 season.
Winfield's toughest choice will be deciding which cap will appear on his plaque -- he became a star with the Padres; gained national recognition with the Yankees; delivered the game-winning hit in the 1992 World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays, and got his 3,000th hit with his hometown Twins. "If I had the statistics and numbers just from one team, that wouldn't be enough to go in," he said. "There were six teams, two leagues, two countries, a couple of decades of hard work. It's a testament to all that got me into the Hall." After years of helping other children through his own foundation, Winfield spends a lot of time with his kids and takes pride in the fact that "they look at me more as daddy than the ballplayer." Winfield's twins -- a boy and a girl -- were infants when he retired, but he's made sure they've seen the videotapes. "You got to reinforce, just in case they say, 'You couldn't play,'" he said, laughing. Winfield is a sports fan who can be spotted in the seats at various pro games around Los Angeles, and he expressed interest in helping resolve possible future baseball work stoppages. "Because players and owners didn't see eye-to-eye, I lost about a year's worth of playing the game," he said. "I wouldn't mind being involved in their trying to see if we could find some solutions." Tuesday's announcement transported Winfield back to his sandlot days with his brother in St. Paul. "When I started playing, I wasn't really hoping for the Hall of Fame. I just wanted to be a professional baseball player, then a starter, then an All-Star," he said. "The guys who play this game and don't give it their all, they just don't know what they're missing because when it's over, you'll never replace that joy you have on that baseball field."
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