Yanked to Fame

In a third-floor corner suite overlooking Ventura Boulevard, the executive whirls in his chair. He picks up a pair of reading glasses from his desk.

“I didn’t need these when I played,” Dave Winfield says, smiling broadly, more bemused than frustrated by middle age. He turns 50 in October.

Winfield puts on the glasses and picks up the newspaper. It’s an old one, from 1991, and the sports page is dominated by a story about him, with the headline “Bound for Hall, bound to George.”

Winfield nods as he reads something he said 10 years ago: “I don’t really want to have to be remembered in conjunction with George Steinbrenner, although it’s inevitable.”

He puts the paper down and smiles again. He is indeed bound for the baseball Hall of Fame, with induction ceremonies Sunday. He has extended his legacy beyond the Steinbrenner years--or so he hopes--and in any case he has made his peace with his longtime foil.

It was Steinbrenner, the New York Yankee owner, who signed Winfield to a 10-year, $23-million free-agent contract in 1980--tip money to Alex Rodriguez, but in its time a similarly outrageous deal. It was Steinbrenner whom Winfield sued to ignite a parade of lawsuits over who owed what to Winfield’s charitable foundation. It was Steinbrenner who paid an admitted gambler $40,000 to dig up damaging information about Winfield, an act that resulted in Steinbrenner’s suspension. And it was Steinbrenner who stuck Winfield with a durable and derisive tag: “Has anybody seen Reggie Jackson? I need Mr. October. All I have is a Mr. May.”

Said Winfield: “Since I’ve finished the game, we’ve come a very long way. He apologized for a lot of the things that had happened. Ten years ago, you couldn’t even have envisioned that. But he has apologized, publicly and privately.

“Sometimes time and distance mean a lot. I think it was important for me to go do other things, in other places, gain different relationships and different perspectives on the game. It made it fun.”

The tabloid headlines obscured a brilliant career in New York. Winfield drove in at least 100 runs from 1982-86, the first Yankee to do so in five consecutive years since Joe DiMaggio. He played eight full seasons in New York, an all-star each year, then sat out the 1989 season after back surgery. In May 1990, after a one-for-26 exhibition season and a .191 April, Winfield was deemed washed up by the Yankees, who traded him to the Angels for pitcher Mike Witt.

Liberated from Steinbrenner, Winfield revived his career under the benevolent ownership of the late Gene Autry.

“What people don’t know, but what they’ll hear me say on Sunday, is that I played for some good guys and I got to know virtually all the owners personally, but Gene Autry was the nicest one. I think about him in a very fond way,” Winfield said.

“My wife had a surprise 40th birthday party when I was there. He and Jackie [Autry’s wife]? Almost the first two people there and two of the last people to leave. [Gene Autry was 84 at the time.] For me to have that closeness, that experience, that relationship with an owner was special. I wanted to win for him very badly.”

No one won a title for Autry. In Anaheim, though, Winfield won comeback-player-of-the-year honors in 1991, hitting 28 home runs and becoming the oldest player to hit for the cycle.

In Toronto, in 1992, he hit 26 home runs and shook off the “Mr. May” label--born of a one-for-22 performance in the Yankees’ 1981 World Series loss to the Dodgers--with a double that drove home the winning runs in the sixth and final game of the Blue Jays’ World Series victory over the Atlanta Braves. In Minnesota, in 1993, he hit 21 home runs and collected his 3,000th hit for his hometown team.

Labels? “World Series hero” and “hometown hero” suit him just fine.

“If my career would have ended with back surgery in 1989 and I never played again, I would have played a game that I loved for a long time, made a good living and become well-known, but I would not have been remembered in a way that I would have wanted to be remembered,” Winfield said. “The vast amount of people that know me, they would have said, ‘unfair and untrue.’

“If I never got the chance to play for the Angels, and then for the Blue Jays and the Twins, it would have been kind of unbelievable to me. It would have been unfortunate.”

Winfield displayed the rare blend of superstar ability with a superior work ethic. He remains the only player drafted in three professional sports--by the San Diego Padres, the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, the Utah Stars of the ABA and, though he never played college football, the Minnesota Vikings.

He wanted to pitch; he struck out 15 in his last game for the University of Minnesota, against USC in the 1973 College World Series. The Padres signed him, handed him an outfielder’s glove and told him to skip the minor leagues. He will wear a Padre cap on his Hall of Fame plaque--not, he insists, as a slap at the Yankees, but for the chance to become the first Padre in the Hall of Fame and to recognize the team with which he developed into a superstar over the first eight seasons of his career.

He joins Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken and Carl Yastrzemski as the only players to collect 3,000 hits and 400 home runs. He stole 223 bases, made the all-star team 12 times and won a Gold Glove seven times, a particular source of pride because he played only one season of college ball as an outfielder and mastered defense without spending a day in the minors.

Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson said he never saw Winfield fail to run a ball out.

“The thing you want to respect about yourself is not what you did but that you never cheated the game,” Anderson said. “On that field, you could never ask somebody to give you more.”

From that corner suite in the office building in Sherman Oaks, Winfield heads the baseball division of Call of Fame, a fledgling venture that allows fans to talk with former players on a pay-per-minute basis.

“I thought this was the best way to reconnect former players with the game of baseball and their fans,” he said. “I came up with the slogan--reliving memories and fulfilling dreams.”

Winfield could find no better words to describe his experiences this year, starting with the January call that informed him of his election to the Hall of Fame and highlighted by Sunday’s induction.

Wheaties put him on a cereal box. The Twins gave out Winfield bobblehead dolls. The Padres staged Dave Winfield Day, and so did the Twins. The Angels plan to honor Winfield on Sept. 8.

And the Yankees? Winfield laughs heartily.

“They used to say, ‘Do you think they’ll ever give you a day?’ And I’d say, ‘Sure, they’ll give me a day--a day to get out of town,’ ” he said.

Dave Winfield Day at Yankee Stadium is Aug. 18.