Winfield Pardoned by Blue Jays’ Fans

He’s a hero in a home uniform now, but it wasn’t too long ago Dave Winfield was under arrest in this town for murder.

Not manslaughter exactly, but he killed a local resident, a seagull. Birdslaughter One.

That was in August ‘83, between innings of a game between Winfield’s New York Yankees and Toronto’s Blue Jays. Winfield was warming up his throwing arm in the outfield when he spotted this gull sitting on a fence. He decided to scare it with a throw. He scared it all right--scared it to death.

That was the third inning. By the ninth inning, the police were waiting with a warrant. The Audubon Society was all upset. You would have thought he killed Cock Robin. Fans in the stands turned him in.

Winfield was in the hated New York uniform at the time and, after the game, he was cuffed and taken down to the police station and booked. And he remembers shielding his face with his coat, like an indicted Mafia don.

The people of Toronto have long since forgiven the man they call Winnie. After all, it could have been a case of self-defense. Presumably, he has given up his life of crime. He’s a bigger Canadian hero now than Gen. Wolfe.

Dave Winfield with a bat in his hand would scare more than a bird. He was the most frightening sight a pitcher could see this side of a charging water buffalo. I mean, just standing there, Dave Winfield looks like 40 home runs and a 100 runs batted in waiting to happen. Some nights pitchers hate to let go of the ball.

First of all, he soars 6 feet 6 inches in the air. He’s a great athlete. Basketball coaches used to drool. Football coaches begged him to try tight end. He weighs 245 pounds and it’s all muscle. In the skyline of baseball players, he’s the World Trade Center. A manager is almost relieved when his pitcher holds him to a single.

Dave Winfield has won a lot of ballgames with home runs. He has hit 432 of them in a career spent mostly in Yankee Stadium, where the left-field fence is so far out the area is known as “Death Valley.” Before that he was in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, which was just easier to hit a ball out of than Yellowstone Park.

He has driven in 1,710 runs, Hall of Fame totals in a sport where only Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth have driven in more than 2,000. Those are the kinds of names ahead of him, plus Lou Gehrig, Stan Musial and Ty Cobb.

So it would not be man-bites-dog or Massachusetts Goes Republican to read of Dave Winfield winning a ballgame with a home run or a long fly.

But Dave Winfield beating you with the bunt is hold-the-presses, break-into-scheduled-programming. Winfield does not beat you with bunts. When he does, it’s the canary chasing the cat, the utility infielder hitting the grand slam.

Among the people not expecting Dave Winfield to bunt were the Atlanta Braves. They didn’t think he knew how.

Rewind the tape to Game 3, which, you read in the papers, was won by Candy Maldonado, who got a hit over a drawn-in outfield with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.

The score was tied when the inning opened. Then, Robbie Alomar opened with a single. He stole second. So Atlanta walked Joe Carter on purpose.

Out of the dugout in that loose-shambling walk of his, which resembles nothing so much as a guy about to break into a soft-shoe hoof, came Winfield. He waved the bat, which looked like a conductor’s wand in his massive hands. It was a scene right out of Casey-at-the-Bat. The ballpark rose screaming. Here, they felt sure, was the three-run homer.

Atlanta fielders looked at each other nervously, licking their lips. The outfield backed up.

Now, the book in this situation calls for the bunt. Infielders are meant to creep in, get ready to pounce, maybe shoot for the double play.

But they couldn’t bring themselves to believe Winfield would lay it down. They held their ground, rather than risk decapitation by one of Winfield’s patented rising line drives.

Winfield shortened up, crossed them up and bunted the ball. It wasn’t a textbook bunt, but it caught the Braves off balance. The second baseman dashed to cover first, the runners advanced. Toronto had the game-winning run on third.

Atlanta filled the bases and called in its outfield in hopes it could cut down the run on anything hit shallow. Maldonado had his game-winning hit handed to him to like a whipped-cream cake.

Winfield bunting was like having a railroad gun shoot water, like asking Mike Tyson to jab. But without that bunt, Toronto does not have the game-winning situation.

It has been that kind of Series. Wednesday night, for the fourth time in the last five Atlanta games, it was won by a hit by a catcher. Toronto’s Pat Borders joined Francisco Cabrera, Damon Berryhill and Ed Sprague. It has been the Nobody Series, the triumph of the “who-in-the-world-is-he?”

Toronto now has a 3-1 lead and could take the world baseball championship out of the United States for the first time in its 90-year-old history.

The pitchers have muzzled the bubble-gum heroes--what few there are in this tournament--and turned center stage over to the blue-collar types.

It was the third consecutive one-run game. It is the kind of Series in which Dave Winfield bunts--and backup catchers hit the ball over the wall. The Braves aren’t dead, but their throats are rattling. On the other hand, despite their 3-1 lead, Toronto might view Game 5 as a “must.” They are not a cinch if the game returns to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, otherwise known as Little Big Horn.

But Toronto has an uncashed check, a still-loaded gun in their DH Winfield. A man to whom sacrifice always mean a giant outfield fly that scored a winner, Winfield is down to winning the game the way scrappy infielders do.

“Was that the first sacrifice bunt you’ve ever laid down,” he was asked in the Blue Jays’ dugout. “No,” he smiled, “just the most important.”

The man who killed a seagull here has atoned. He has even given up hunting doves. And, after all, if he’d been sentenced to community service, laying down a bunt and giving up an at-bat for the team certainly qualifies.