winfield on steinbrenner

well done by my man harv:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/sports/baseball/18araton.html?ref=sports

 

very good piece

 

huge fan of winfield growing up. great read.

 

I remember Winfield vividly as a player, but never knew that much about him as a person (other than that he was drafted by four teams in three sports). The more interviews — print and broadcast — I see of him, the more I like him.

On the Costas Now thing Wednesday night, Costas tried to put him on the spot about Rose and the Hall of Fame, with Pete looking over his shoulder via satellite. Winfield hinted that he didn't think Rose should be in, without actually coming out and saying it. It wasn't that he didn't stand behind his opinions; it's that he didn't want to insult a proud man to his face.

Class guy.

 

Boy, that was a helluva finish:

Great stuff.

 

Not only great stuff, but two people whose talents seem never to be fully appreciated in New York ... Dave Winfield and Harvey Araton.

 

Dave Winfield? The same classy Dave Winfield who put his HOF plaque up to the highest bidder? That one?

 

Dave Winfield played 1117 games for San Diego and 1182 for the Yankees.
Dave Winfield was run out of New York by Steinbrenner at the height of his lunacy ... with the help of a little scumbnag named Howie Spira, an act that got Steinbrenner suspended for 2 years.

So, dickhead, you think Winfield should have gone into the Hall as a proud Yankee?

 

I knew you'd take it like that. I never said he SHOULD have gone in as a Yankee.

Just would have been more classy to say he wanted to go in with the Padres, instead of deciding to go with whichever team offered him a better (re: more lucrative) front-office position. He's the reason the Hall has taken the cap decision completely out of the hands of the players.

 

Actually, Wade Boggs wanting to go in as a (Devil) Ray, is why the Hall has taken it completely out of the hands of the players.

 

It was Wade who got the Hall more involved. But when Winfield sold the rights to his hat to the Padres, the Hall all but cut the player out.

http://espn.go.com/classic/s/2001/0116/1018832.html

George turned the charm on for months trying to get Winfield to go in as a Yankee: http://sports.espn.go.com/classic/s/2001/0116/1019625.html

It was after Winfield decided to go in with the Padres--who, coincidence of coincidences, also received a VP job with the Padres at the same time--that the Hall explicitly declared the hat was its decision.

http://www.sptimes.com/2002/05/10/Columns/A_tip_of_the_cap_to_t.shtml

EDIT: And this from a Peter Gammons column in 2002:

When Dave Winfield essentially auctioned off his Hall of Fame plaque cap to the highest bidder, it forced the Hall to change the rule so that the player will no longer decide what cap he wears into the Hall. As one Cooperstown official notes, this means that no matter what side deals Wade Boggs made with the Devil Rays and Roger Clemens with the Yankees, when they are enshrined in Cooperstown, they will have Boston caps on their plaques. Which means Boggs and Clemens will have uniform-retiring ceremonies at Fenway Park.

Of course, Boggs has yet to have his number retired by the Sox and Clemens never will.

Since then, the player's hat is revealed the day after he's elected.

And how about Winfield asking the NY chapter of the BBWAA to pay his "expenses" when he attended the dinner as a guest of honor in the early '80s? It's in the Bill Madden/Moss Klein book "Damned Yankees."

Never liked Winfield. Always reeked of fake to me.

 

And how about Winfield asking the NY chapter of the BBWAA to pay his "expenses" when he attended the dinner as a guest of honor in the early '80s? It's in the Bill Madden/Moss Klein book "Damned Yankees."

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And how about Joe D always demanding the the BBWAA pay his expenses to the writers dinner, have a limo waiting to pick him up the second he stepped off the plane, have a suite at the Waldorf, have no contact with anyone other than those who were running the dinner.
A former NY chapter chairman told me there was no one more difficult to deal with at a BBWAA dinner than the sainted Joe D.