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Dave Winfield represents American Legion Baseball at its best. In an era where baseball literature consists of tabloid tomes such as Jose Canseco’s “Juiced” and David Wells’ “Perfect I’m Not,” Winfield’s book, “Dropping the Ball” is more Thomas Aquinas than Jerry Springer.
Even though this major league Hall of Famer had legendary battles with Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner and once played for Billy Martin, you will find no dirt in this literary work. The former American Legion Baseball star uses the book to tout his proposal, “The Baseball United Plan,” because, Winfield says, “The game I love is hurting.” If you want to read about clubhouse fights, big league cheaters or drunks of the baseball diamond, buy a different book. Winfield is a man with a plan. Now a vice president of the San Diego Padres, Winfield recently spoke with The American Legion Magazine.
Q: What is “Baseball United?”
A: I call it a check-up and a prescription for our national pastime. There is a disconnect in the game that I summarize in the book. Under that disconnect, there are “three Cs.” One is competition. One is cost. And one is continuity. This is why I titled the book, “Dropping the Ball.” Baseball for a long time was passed from father-to-son, generation-to-generation, seamlessly. It didn’t cost anything. Now Parks and Recs don’t have budgets to support baseball and there are other sports that have come into that vacuum. When I grew up baseball was huge – the primary sport in America. And there was little competition. Now, this isn’t the case. Football began to have more importance in America – people didn’t think the Super Bowl would succeed. People didn’t aspire to be an NBA player. College sports were nowhere near as large as it is today with March Madness. There were no such things as video games and kids in America could go outside and play for hours at a time unsupervised. Society has changed.
A lot of places today don’t even have baseball teams that are of primary importance or competitive, especially at public schools So America is looking at two separate but unequal paths to playing baseball. If you grew up in an urban area with an under-funded Parks and Recreation department, you have little chance of playing good baseball. I offer suggestions and that’s what the book is about. It doesn’t just lament the changes – millions and millions still play it – it is still the best team sport. It’s the best for building community and if by chance you are the one in an a million that reaches the top, everything is better for you as a baseball player than in the other sports. Longevity, benefits, pay and long-term health.
Baseball may never regain its universal position in sports because some communities have adopted basketball and some have adopted football. Some have adopted soccer. So there is competition not only for the sports entertainment dollar, but for what the communities want to do. It may be the strength of an American Legion program or a Parks and Recs department. It may be the strength of a small businessman or a large corporation saying we are going to establish an area where we have fields designated for youth baseball, at each level, with consistency of coaching, moving to the next level, consistency on the fields. I address the fact that there are so many Latin American players. People don’t know that academies have started 30 years ago in other countries and they have really taken root and taken hold. There are also different governing laws about the way you can draft or own the rights of kids in foreign countries. It’s less expensive for Major League Baseball to develop talent over there. In our minor league system over 40 percent are foreign players. I am not saying it’s bad or good. It’s just what is happening. I wrote a chapter on the last black major leaguer. How come African American players aren’t playing? In 10 years if the trend lines stay the same, there will be one person left. Some say that maybe they just don’t like the game anymore, but I was also looking at it from a business standpoint. African Americans have the second most spending power in America, over 700 billion dollars.
Q: You have always been anti-drug. Is Barry Bonds a legitimate homerun champion?
A: I am not going to answer that. The public is conflicted about the top players. People are conflicted about ‘should I support them?’ ‘should I like them?’ or ‘do I want my kids to be like them?’ It’s hard to say. Maybe 50-50 say ‘I don’t know if it was assisted by drugs or something I can’t condone,’ and that’s the image people have of baseball and our top players. When we look back 10 years from now, we will look back from 1996-2006 as an era that’s suspect. Some argue that the drugs weren’t illegal in the sport at the time. I say, ‘Hey, the drugs were illegal in America. If you were transporting, selling or using them, you can go to jail. So they were illegal. That’s not a defense.’
Q: Has free agency been good for the game?
A: It’s been good for the players. I started when players didn’t have free agency, arbitration, multi-year contracts or good pensions. And I was part of the Players Association when it was negotiating benefits and made the leap where you could make a livelihood out of baseball. There is always good and bad in change. Cities complain that they don’t know their players but they do have more of an ability to move out of the quagmire of mediocrity by obtaining different players.
Q: As an official with the San Diego Padres, tell me about the young Iraq War veteran that your organization has signed, Cooper Brannan.
A: It’s a great story. A pitcher that has been in the military. The Padres have the best military-marketing of any ballclub. Even when I was there in the 70s they were always out there on Sunday and making the ‘hoorah’ noise. They were always part of our landscape so we had a great deal of respect for them. It would be a great, great story should he make it to the major leagues.
Q: Did American Legion Baseball contribute to your development as a player?
A: It absolutely did. It was a very positive experience for me. It was a proud time for our community too, because we had some pretty good teams and gained some recognition. It was just part of the youth baseball experience that brought our community close together – the families, the kids, the experiences of growing up. It was valuable. I had good coaching and we had good teams. The American Legion tournaments contributed to me getting the college scholarships and being drafted by Major League Baseball.
Interview: John Raughter
Comments (2)
Great Story!
Posted by Jason R. Denny | 09/28/07 10:36 AM |
The right message at the right time!
Posted by Jody Moeller | 10/04/07 10:28 AM |