Winfield Couldn’t Match Reggie in N.Y.

I’m sure we’ll talk and rap later how to deal with the city. It’s a lion’s den. It’s the greatest place to play, but also the most difficult. It can be Disneyland or it can be hell.

--Reggie Jackson at the New York Yankees’ press conference Dec. 15, 1980, to announce the signing of free agent Dave Winfield.

After 10 years of hell, Dave Winfield is off to Disneyland.

To the California Angels, the same place Reggie Jackson went when he got a chance to leave the Yankees. Isn’t that ironic?

For all his near-Hall of Fame numbers, the reason Winfield never made it in New York, New York, was Reggie. Because Winfield wasn’t another Reggie.

At least, that’s how George Steinbrenner always saw it. In his mind, Winfield never was an angel, so to speak.

“Has anybody seen Reggie Jackson? I need Mr. October,” Steinbrenner said in September 1985, summing up his past, present and future feelings. “All I have is a Mr. May, Dave Winfield.”

That wasn’t the first time. During spring training in 1983, the Yankees owner was trying to explain baseball and life, his way.

“Some people are just born winners,” Steinbrenner said. “Certainly Reggie Jackson was.

“What I said was that Winfield had never played on a winning team. Not in the NCAA when he was a star in three sports and not in the World Series. It wasn’t meant as a criticism. It was just a statement of fact. It’s one thing to put numbers on the board, another to be a winner.”

By then, one of baseball’s oddest chapters already was being written in the Bronx. That was after the big contract, after the 1-for-22 in the 1981 World Series and after the David M. Winfield Foundation became involved in the first of three lawsuits with Steinbrenner, but before the book controversy, the back problem and Howie Spira.

Steinbrenner and Winfield did not invent feuds between stars and management. Darryl Strawberry and the New York Mets and George Bell and the Toronto Blue Jays have had recent go-arounds. Richie Allen and the Philadelphia Phillies never got along, and even someone like Ty Cobb had rough times.

But, has it ever dragged out for a decade?

During that time, the fans at Yankee Stadium came to love Winfield’s all-out hustle on the bases, his big swing and his willingness to challenge outfield walls to catch fly balls. But some thought he was too self-centered; Steinbrenner did, for sure.

If the Billy Martin-Steinbrenner partnership was love-hate, the Winfield-Steinbrenner pairing was hate-hate. Even at the end, as they posed together for pictures this week at Yankee Stadium after exchanging apologies, truth is they couldn’t stand each other.

“We’ve had our differences over the years. I’m not going to dwell on them now,” Winfield said Wednesday night when he agreed to a three-year, $9.1-million contract extension and accepted a trade to the Angels. “I have no bad things to say.”

Steinbrenner was just as conciliatory.

“I am hopeful that any ill feelings carried by either of us have been eliminated,” he said. “I’m totally supportive of him and I think he knows that.”

That’s how it seemed at the start.

Steinbrenner was the first owner to see the full potential of free agency and built World Series champions in 1977 and 1978 by buying such players as Catfish Hunter, Goose Gossage and Jackson. After the 1980 season, another prize appeared on the horizon -- Winfield, a 29-year-old All-Star who had languished on second-division teams in San Diego.

Winfield wanted to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers. But that was in the days of the free-agent draft and the Dodgers didn’t even pick him. So it came down to the Yankees, the Mets, Atlanta and Cleveland.

The Yankees liked to build their teams around star sluggers, guys like Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle, and Steinbrenner saw the same possibility for Winfield. Steinbrenner gave Winfield the richest contract in baseball, more than $20 million for 10 years.

“It’s not George Steinbrenner’s money, it’s the people of New York’s money,” Steinbrenner said at the time. “The fans, 2.6 million of them, enabled us to sign Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson and the others.”

Winfield remembers that afternoon, too.

“I was swept off my feet when they went out to sign me,” Winfield said two years later. “Fancy restaurants, sweet talk, a lot of promises ...

“I don’t know what happened, but George suddenly turned sour on me. I have fulfilled my part of the contract,” he said. “I have played the best baseball I know how. I have put the numbers on the board.”

But for all the 100-RBI seasons Winfield compiled -- he did it in every full year he played in New York except 1988, when he had 97 -- the only numbers Steinbrenner remembered came in the 1981 World Series, the last time the Yankees were there.

Winfield managed only a puny single in 22 at-bats against Los Angeles, and admitted that death threats hurt his concentration. The Yankees lost to the Dodgers in six games, and Steinbrenner shortly thereafter issued a public apology to the fans in New York.

Reggie was hurt that year and played in only three games against the Dodgers, but still batted .333 with one home run. In his three World Series with the Yankees, Jackson batted .400 with eight home runs and 17 RBIs.

Never mind that the Yankees won more games than any team during the 1980s with Winfield. Or that Winfield became seventh on the team’s all-time home run list with 205, or that he had more RBIs in a 10-year stretch than anyone in the majors, or that he outdid what he done for the Padres.

It was the only decade since Ruth and Gehrig in which the New Yorkers did not win a World Series, and that fact was not lost on Steinbrenner. When Winfield initially refused the trade to the Angels, Steinbrenner brought it up again.

“He’s been here since 1981 and we’ve never won,” Steinbrenner said. “Isn’t that strange?”

Winfield never lost sight of it, either. He played in 12 All-Star Games -- the Yankees left him off the ballot this year -- but 1981 remains his only postseason appearance.

“What I want more than anything in the world is to see the Yankees win the World Series and have people point to me and say, ‘The big guy helped them do it,’ ” he said.

That did not happen and now it never will. Instead, the insults intensified in both directions.

After Winfield’s autobiography “Winfield, A Player’s Life,” took a few shots at Steinbrenner, the owner fired back in the spring of 1988, pointing to Willie Randolph’s criticism that he had been misquoted.

“First, it was a common-law wife and a child out of wedlock in December,” Steinbrenner said. “Now, the team captain is saying Winfield lied in the book. It might be just the beginning. I hope not.

“Usually a guy writes a book when he’s coming to the end of his career and he realizes his physical attributes aren’t what they once were, his performance levels aren’t what they once were,” Steinbrenner said.

Winfield had hit .275 with 27 home runs and 97 RBIs in 1987. In 1988, he did even better, batting .322 with 25 homers and 107 RBIs.

But no matter. It’s over.