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Hall of Famer Dave Winfield on his Famous Feud with the Yankees · Sports In America with David Greene

• DAVID GREENE, HOST: I am so excited about this world series that is getting underway. It is the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays, which is awesome for Milwaukee. It's awesome for Tampa Bay. And the other awesome thing is the best team that money can buy, the LA Dodgers, have been vanquished. And I am here with Molly Knight, who is a sports writer and author who wrote a book called "The Best Team Money Can Buy," about a decade ago about the Dodgers. And so you're the perfect person to ask, what does it mean that the LA dodgers with this massive payroll. Our. Not in this World Series. Then we'll get to the important stuff and talk about the teams who are.  MOLLY KNIGHT: Well, thank you. Thank you for plugging my book.  DG: New York Times bestseller, available on Amazon. Oh, thank you.  MK: Yeah, because the thesis of my book is that you cannot buy a championship. That was the, um, that was sort of the tongue in cheek title. Because look, we've seen with teams like the Mets, even the Yankees who haven't won, in what's 16, 17 years, you can't just like throw money at the problem. If that problem doesn't also include like fixing the organization from the ground up. And that, that has to do with your drafting, your scouting, your player development. Your organizational philosophies, your coaching, the things that you prioritize. I mean, the Brewers and the Rays are two of the, this is not a fluke that they've made the World Series. Neither one of them has ever won a World Series, but these are the two teams that won them. This is the team that won the most games in the National League against the team that won most games in the American League. These two teams are, they're so well-run. They focus on doing all the little things right, which I know people. Like are sick of hearing, but they play defense, they run the bases well. These are things that teams like the Yankees and the Mets do not do. I know I'm bringing up the Yankee's and the Met's when you asked about the Dodgers, but  DG: Yeah, these big spenders.  MK: Yeah, they just got rocked by the Brewers in the NLCS. They just got swept. And there are these weird conspiracy theories online. By the way, I shouldn't even be giving like them attention, but here we are. That like somehow they did it on perp, like they threw it because there's gonna be a lockout and the owners were all crying about how it's not fair to the small market teams. Well, it's fair to incompetent small market team. Right, right. But we have two small market that are run. Expertly and they have they have earned it they deserve it and here and here they are and It just means that there's no way there's nowhere to hide for these owners like in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and other other Oakland will now in Sacramento or wherever the heck they're going It is not enough to just cry poverty and say we don't have a chance  DG: No, not having money is not an excuse and believe me as a Pirates fan like I live that every day and I'm looking at This world series and saying if you had a good owner and a good GM you could be where the Brewers and Rays are Yeah, I want it. You've said so many things I want to I want a follow-up and you wrote on your sub stack the long game very much What was the core tenant of your book that money alone can't buy championships, which is what we saw I guess with the Dodgers losing but you also brought up the lockout and I think that's really important for people to understand Like all these owners are saying we need a salary cap to give these small markets a chance to be successful. Does this world series, now that we have two small markets being there, kind of ruin the argument that you need a salaried cap because you can spend a lot of money, it doesn't matter, look at the Dodger.  MK: It does, it does, um, it, it ruins their argument. They're going to try to do the argument anyway, these are billionaires, who are all of a sudden into socialism, which is hilarious. You know, they, they want like a situation where you don't get to benefit from innovation or whatever. Like, you don, the Dodger say the Dodgers or the Brewers or the, or the Rays say that they decide they want to invest more money on cutting edge stuff for minor leaguers. Right? Like they want, they've decided to do sleep science and nutritional stuff. Which costs less than going and signing Juan Soto or Shohei Otani, right? They want to do all these little things. They want have fielding clinics and this and that and invest in that. Well, some of these owners want to put a restriction on that. They think it's unfair that certain teams are investing more in their development of players. That's ridiculous. I mean, this is, we're like in late stage capitalism right now. And yet this seems to be the only place where it's fair to use your capital to get advantages. So they're toast going into these, going into the lockout.  DG: But the stupid conspiracy theory, I mean, obviously no truth to it, but it was the idea that the players would throw that game, I mean basically to hurt the owner's argument that there needs to be a salary cap.  MK: OK, yeah, so the idea is basically that the entire Dodgers roster and all their coaches were in on this. They were in losing all four games to the Brewers, right? Now you have 28 different or 26 different players with all different competing things. You've got rookies who like a World Series share would be life changing and they may never be on a team like this again, right.  DG: You have a team that wants to win three straight World Series, which is like a monumental achievement.  MK: And it's also frankly, like it's insulting to the Brewers. Like, like the Brewer's aren't good enough to pull this off. Yes, they are. They won 103 games. They won more games than the Dodgers last year. It just so happens that they're playing fantastic baseball and the Dodger's were playing like crap and that happens in the playoffs. That's baseball. That's why it's the best sport and the worst sport, and that's why money cannot guarantee a championship in the sport. There's no way.  DG: Well, enough about the Dodgers. Let's talk about first the Milwaukee Brewers. I mean, they have a manager, Pat Murphy. He brings a certain style. They bring a style, they don't hit many home runs, which is super interesting. Like what is the argument that the Brewers are set up to actually win this thing?  MK: Well, it's funny because they out home are the Dodgers and then I'll see as like all year. I was like  DG: But it still wasn't that many homers, right?  MK: No, I mean, but it was, they'd be the Dodgers at every single facet, which is just, it's just endlessly hilarious to me because all year long all we heard was just like, oh, the Brewers don't hit homers. And then they just like. I mean I think Otani was the only guy to home run that series. It felt like half the Brewer's roster.  DG: I know you covered I covered the Dodgers for a long time. You're kind of glee at seeing them go down It's kind of funny. I have to say  MK: You know what? It's not even a glee about the Dodgers losing. It's the glee of the owners being, their argument being blown up and the gley of my, well, I guess I'm a little smug that my hypothesis was correct that you can't buy a championship in the sport.  DG: I think own it, you should own that.  MK: Well, yeah, I mean, some people will just believe you can until they die. So but the Brewers, you know, I was in Milwaukee on Memorial Day. I took took 80 of my readers, actually, to go see them. It was so fun. We had the time of our lives. And I talked to some executives there while I was at the game. And, you, know, we just talked about defense and how for them, you know the "Moneyball," the whole idea of "Moneyball" back 20 years ago. 25 years ago at this point with Billy Beane was he felt that on-base percentage was the undervalued asset. And so the A's couldn't afford to go, they couldn't to resign Jason Giambi, you know, because he was going to the Yankees, they could afford some of these guys, but they could afford to get guys who walked a lot. And that because they felt like, well, walks as good as a hit.  DG: Yeah, get on base any way you can.  MK: Exactly. The Brewer is what they decided. And then now everybody understands that on-base percentage is really important. Right. Scoring runs is really important. The Brewers decided, well, defense is the new frontier of like, this is undervalued. We want to just, we want to prioritize it. We want assign guys who play defense. We want, and we want, we wanna really emphasize defense and run prevention. Right. And that just makes it so that, you know, you basically have to hit the ball over the fence against the Brewers.  DG: Otherwise, they're going to catch it and get you out.  MK: Yes, yes. And we saw that with the pot in the Padres series with Manny Machado robbed of a homer at the wall in the Dodger series. They were all over the place. They were over the field making diving plays. I mean, granted, they again, they were dominant in every facet, but the Rays are the same way. So in some ways, these two teams are mirror images of each other. It's kind of like when you when you create something and another team does it and then you're like staring at yourself in the and you have to defeat yourself.  DG: Yeah, two teams that play like small ball and stingy defense and figure out creative ways to score runs, which I think is kind of fun. I mean, I know there are probably some baseball fans out there who just want to see a bunch of blasts, but this is kind fun.  MK: It's really fun to see innovative, hard work rewarded. It's fun that there will be a new World Series champion. This will make three in the last eight seasons. The Rangers had never won, the Nationals had not won, and then now we're gonna have a new champion this year, regardless of who wins. I was looking at StubHub yesterday, because I do have tickets to the World Series in Milwaukee, I'm gonna give them to a friend, but tickets are going for like the cheapest ticket for like $4,000 for a Milwaukee game. I don't know if that's going to drop or what that's about, but because they've never, they haven't even been in, in, in 44 years.  DG: Probably every resident of the city wants to be be in that stadium. Yeah, why aren't you going you're giving the tickets away?  MK: Yeah. Well, I'm giving the tickets to my friend who's a diehard Brewers fan, and he's going to take his, take his son. So, I mean, yeah, it's just, it' exciting. It's exciting. The only, the only drawback of these, these playoffs so far for me has been that the lack of game sevens, the lack game fives, the of chaos last year, it just felt like, oh, last year was like, Oh my God, it felt like every round there was like. I was stressed when the Tigers were playing, the Mariners, I think it was, I was stress when the Mariners were playing the Mariners and the Blue Jays went seven, and then the World Series went seven and it was just like epic. And I want this series, I don't really have a vested rooting interest because both the teams are likable and deserving and both of their fan bases are long suffering. You just want seven games. I just want to see both seven.  DG: Yeah, I do too.  MK: And I want it to be compelling and I want like I want Caminero and Choreo to like become superstars in and in the national like casual fan like consciousness.  DG: You bring up Junior Caminero, who's the great star for the Rays. What a vibe and what energy he brings. But it makes me remember back to a conversation you and I had a couple of months ago about how the fun police and baseball are gone. Like you can hit home runs and just celebrate and have antics. I mean, Junior Caminero hit a home run to basically seal the series against the Cleveland Guardians. And I don't know if you can celebrate more emotionally. I mean he like took. So it's what felt like five minutes to round the bases and you know,  MK: I think he's still rounding the bases. I think, yes, yeah, that game's not over yet. And I, listen, I've always been on team fun. Now, I don't love it when these guys fight, when they have brawls and stuff, just because I, I dunno, I worry about player safety. I'm a little bit, I'm little sensitive, but it seems like the pitchers are over it. Like I remember Clayton Kershaw. Saying, it was interesting, the Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner era, and Bumgarner would just get so mad if anybody even appeared to be excited, they humored off of them, he'd wanna fight them. And I remember Kershaw, who was the same age, and, you know, similar, I guess, was just like, it's my own fault. If you humor off me, like, moonwalker on the basis. Like, do whatever you want. Like, his thing was like, I'm not gonna get into, Like being worried about your celebration. Like I need to move on to the next pitch and not get all emotional about it.  DG: And also celebrate on the mound. Like if you get a lockdown strikeout, you can celebrate too. And they do.  MK: They get a fist pump when they run off the mound. And that's what we love to see.  DG: Yeah, more of that. Well, Junior Caminero, I mean, Colin Cowherd, the salty sports commentator, said that Junior Caminero was obnoxious, which made me a little mad.  MK: That's his thought on this? Okay, is he gonna write him a little report card and send them to the principal's office?  DG: Be the president of the front, please.  MK: Sports are supposed to be fun and entertaining. In the NFL, they do celebration dances. In the NBA, they did windmill dunks and all kinds of fun stuff. Like, hello, we're watching this to forget about the terrors of the world, right? Like, I mean, yes, Caminero's celebration was excessive, but also. He hit the game ceiling, the pennant ceiling Homer, right? For a team that has never won the World Series. Like, I'm okay with it. I'm OK with him getting a t-shirt cannon and firing into the crowd. Like, do what you need to do, guy.  DG: I agree, before I let you go, I want to kind of set up the conversation we're going to listen to. I had this, um, kind of crazy conversation with baseball legend, Dave Winfield, looking back to his days. Yeah. George Steinbrenner and their, their fight back and forth, which was legendary and Winfield really at the time, I mean, highest paid player in baseball signed what at that time was a mega contract with the Yankees that I think set the stage probably for many of the contracts we're seeing today, like, how do you see his legacy?  MK: Well, he has a book that just came out, and I'm excited to read it. Yeah, it's good. Look, the guys who, like Dave Winfield and Rickey Henderson and others who were on the forefront of free agency in getting these million dollar contracts, right? Players today owe so much to them, because, and Marvin Miller, obviously, and others, who push for these guys to have rights as in a free society and in a capitalist society to go out and take their talents to the highest bidder. It's just incredible to me to think that people were pissed off, the thought that Dave Winfield was making too much money. What was his contract for? Anyway, it was not much compared to what guys are making today.  DG: Pittance compared to now. Yeah.  MK: Pittance. And so it's just, it's crazy. Those guys must be like, they must be so like, I don't want to say bitter, but I would be, I'd be like what in the world, like the worst guy on the team now is making more money than I was making. And I was the best player in the sport and they, they have to continue to work. I mean, guys like Don Mattingly, you know, he loves baseball and he's still, he still in the game because of it, like managing and coaching and stuff, but like they didn't make the kind of money that like Anthony Rendon or Kyle Tucker or these other guys have made. They can't just like ride off into the sunset. They have to like write books, get jobs, do things to continue to support the lifestyle they're accustomed to, I guess I would say. But yes, love Dave Winfield, love that he took on Steinbrenner, love everything about him.  DG: We're going to hear from Dave Winfield, coming up next. Molly Knight, her bestselling book is "The Best Team Money Can Buy." Her amazing Substack is the Long Game. You should check out all of them and Molly, I hope you come back and chat as this World Series get started. It's great talking to you always.  MK: Anytime, David. Thank you.  DG: What comes to mind when you think of Dave Winfield? MUSIC DG: Is it his famous 11th ending hit in the '92 World Series that secured the Blue Jays win over the Atlanta Braves?  BROADCASTER: And a base hit down the line. Alomar scores on a Dave Winfield two base hit.  DG: Maybe it's the fact that he skipped the minor leagues entirely, joining the San Diego Padres right out of college. Maybe it is his 12 All-Star selections, his 22-year career with six different MLB teams, or his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  CLAPPING DAVE WINFIELD IN HALL OF FAME SPEECH: I can't tell you how excited I am and how blessed I am to be able to be going into the Hall of Fame today.  DG: For many people, Dave Winfield's name is synonymous with the New York Yankees, one of the most storied franchises in the MLB and the one that made him the highest paid player in the league. You might be surprised how Dave himself looks back at that time.  DAVE WINFIELD: Those were the worst years of my life. It was planned to disable me, dismember me, break me.  DG: Dave Winfield had an exceptional career in baseball, but a star's real life is not always what it appears from the outside. And the glamor of professional sports can sometimes hide a darkness that lingers under the surface. Dave went through a lot in his career, particularly in his nine years playing for the Yankees. A lot of what he went through was because of team owner, George Steinbrenner.  INTERVIEWER: Do these guys like you, the ballplayers? GEROGE STEINBRENNER IN INTERVIEW: I don't. I don't really care. Isn't that funny? I don't really care, Ed, whether they like me.  DG: Dave Winfield has released a memoir to set the record straight. It's called "Touching All the Bases: A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx."  DW: I just didn't talk about this to a lot of people, but at age 74, I'm entitled.  DG: To do this. I get the last word. Dave gets frank about his time with the Yankees, the contracts, the press conferences, the controversies, and his side of one of the most infamous sports feuds in history. Let's begin when Dave first joined the Yankees. Back in 1981, owner George Steinbrenner really wanted Dave on his team. He offered him what he thought was a $16 million contract to join the Yankees for 10 years. But here is the thing. Dave's agent added a cost of living adjustment clause to the contract that included a 10% annual salary increase. Steinbrenner pretty much missed that clause. So what he thought was a $16 million deal actually ended up costing him more than $23 million, which made it the highest salary of any baseball player at that point in time. Dave would be paid an average of $2.3 million per year of this contract while the average salary in major league baseball at that time was about 185,000 per year. So even though he signed the contract himself, Steinbrenner claimed he didn't really understand the terms. He fought Dave to renegotiate and he even threatened to just not pay him out. It was the beginning of a very public conflict between Dave Winfield and George Steinbrenner that would last the entire 10 years of his contract and it would get really ugly. DW: Today, they would call it, if you went to work somewhere, you'd say a toxic workplace, really.  DG: The Yankees organization? DW: Oh, yeah, it was planned to disable me, dismember me, break me. It wasn't— there was never that support. The fans were always cool. I mean, they loved a guy that got the uniform dirty, jump over fences to catch balls, run over catchers, hit line drives, knock someone's glove off. You know, I mean they they love that kind of stuff. But you don't treat human beings the way I was being treated. They wouldn't stand for if their dad or their mom or their uncle or cousin had to go through the same circumstances. So it got to be so difficult— I'll say this. I was fortunate to make it through those almost 10 years in New York, go to four other cities for six other years to prove to everyone and even myself to live up to my potential. And everybody say, "Hey, man, Winfield's all right. He's a winner. He's the future Hall of Fame baseball player," when that never would have happened if I stayed in New York. It cost me money, time, aggravation. And here's the key thing, for the last 40 years, people, my last year was in 1995. I didn't tell people everything that I went through, all the friends that I would meet, the people that I, you know, new people come into your life at different seasons in life, and I'm living in California, I didn't talk about the negative things that I had been through for so long. DG: Why not? DW: If I told people that I was— from 1980 to maybe almost the end of my career, that's almost 15 years, were the worst and this wasn't just because of the Yankees or the owner of the team. Those were the worst years of my life. Get that straight. And I played the Yankees on All-Star every year, the performance was always up there. Sometimes you have to fight publicly, other times you don't say anything. But when it was all over and I achieved what I had envisioned, maybe when I was a kid, I just didn't talk about this to a lot of people. They don't want to hear, "Oh here comes Dave with a story about some negative things that would happen." So you build relationships on other values and situations and circumstances. But at age 74, I'm entitled to do this. I get the last word. It's very important. It's not a gotcha, you know something scathing.  DG: You feel free. You now feel fully free. DW: I am, I am. DG: Why didn't you feel free back then? Like what— was it a matter of people won't want to hear this or like how could I complain because I was getting paid a lot of money and I was a star for the New York Yankees so I don't have the right to complain. Like what was holding you back?  DW: Those are some reasons, but when it comes down to it, every time you respond to something that someone says in the media, they have a story that takes on a life of its own and that happened all the time. Once you say something, here's another story. It's blown up for the next month. I don't want to hear it. When my baseball season was over, I'm recovering from, you know, something, a workplace that drained my, it hurt my health, my mental state of mind, my physical state of mine. So you have to recover. You have to recoup. You have regenerate. And so you can't talk about it all the time because they'll just end up playing games with your life, and that's what you learn as a professional athlete. Sometimes you talk, sometimes you don't. But what really comes out, the difference between this being an autobiography and a memoir is that I really get into what was in here, what's in the heart, what was in the head, what was happening to my family, my wife, during these times. And I know people will relate to it. They'll say it's hard to imagine, I can't believe that you could still perform, contribute at the level you did. And people say, "Well, why didn't you just leave?"  DG: What do you tell them?  DW: Besides you know just telling people that you know he's not gonna break me will never there's nothing they could do to break me. I'll bend but you can't do that and I'm not gonna be run out of town, then they control my legacy and how people remember me and I didn't know down to the last year, the tenth year of my contract, what was going to happen. Because they were not trying not to play me, trying not let me have a future after I left the Yankees. And when people offered to take me in another team, I just kept saying no, no. And people wondered what the heck? I'd be gone in a minute. The key was, I didn't know what the end result was gonna be, but I had to play it out to the end. And ultimately, when I had some assurance. That the people that wanted me were gonna keep me and give me a chance. And the California Angels, I love them forever. They came around and said, can we give you a three-year contract? I said, adios to the team. I was out of there.  DG: Oh, so after being with the Yankees for that long and going through what you did, you had to be sure that you were going to a place that you could trust. DW: Yeah. Yeah, that did give me a chance because I wasn't finished as a ballplayer But if people listen to just what the propaganda that they were putting out there and the disparaging remarks, they thought that I was just done  DG: I'm struck by this desire. Like you want to own your legacy. You want to make sure that no one else can write the story of Dave Winfield, of your time in the feuds with Steinbrenner. Like it feels like you could not be at peace if you weren't the one telling this story, period.  DW: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the relationship would, you know, Steinbrenner and I talked about after everything was all said and done while he was still on this Earth. There's so many stories where I make, I allow people to be a fly on the wall. For instance, I'm a, I was the player representative for the players. I represent, I was doing the athlete advocacy. I'm the player union representative. Making sure guys are treated fairly and appropriately. And we went through a couple of confrontations and one that he was really out of, he was out of school and doing some improper things and pretty much threatening the guys. And I said, it's not gonna happen. I can't give it all away here, but people will look at it and they'll say, "You mean for the next five years it got worse? Than even the first five? And you had to look over your shoulder all the time?" And the things that they were doing, people could read in the newspaper where George Steinbrenner was kicked out of the game.  DG: Yeah, he was paying someone to dig up dirt on you. MUSIC DW: Oh yeah. DG: I mean, that was one of the low points that we all knew about. Yeah, over Dave's 10 years with the Yankees, Steinbrenner tried to mess with him a lot. After Dave struggled in the 1981 World Series, Steinbrenner publicly shamed him by calling him "Mr. May," you know, instead of Mr. October. Per the terms of their contract, Steinbrenner was on the hook to donate to Dave's charitable foundation, which he tried to dodge, leading to multiple lawsuits between the two men. And yes, in 1987, Steinbrenner actually paid $40,000 to a gambler to try to find damaging information on how Dave was operating his charity. Ultimately, when the MLB commissioner found out about that, Steinbrenner was suspended from the league for two years.  DW: So when he was out of the game, people don't realize that, oh, the reason he was thrown out of the game is because of what he was doing to Dave Winfield. And I got a chance to see all that stuff because it was a systematic plan documented. So, you know, it's all these things you don't, in life, you don't want to talk about every day. But, and I didn't for a long time. Some of my best friends, I mean really, best friends in life like brothers and family, they never saw what was behind the curtain, what was happening.  DG: What was the low point when it comes to the effect that Steinbrenner and this toxic culture had on you, your wife, your family?  DW: Good question. I'm almost stuck on that, you know, what is the worst because it was very bad every day. Well, this happened early in my stay in New York. I just became the highest paid player in sports and that type of stuff. And he told me to my face that I'm not going to give you all your money. And if you don't like it, sue me. I'm talking millions of dollars. (Laughs) DG: And was that money, that was some of the money that was meant for some of your philanthropy or this was part of the salary contract?  DW: He yeah, that was that was at but everything when you have to fight somebody it costs you money and all kinds of other things so you start piling one thing on top of another. And all of a sudden you look back, oh, that was the beginning of what cost you your name, your brand, your bank account, all of these things. They just began to, you know, it wasn't one thing, but it started there. It surprised the heck out of me. I'm coming there and I know I can play and I'm going to contribute, and I am going to help the Yankees win another championship during my stay, and I'll probably live in New York and be happy. That was dispelled in the first about month that somebody told you that and acted upon it and didn't pay money. We reneged on contracts. So it started on his side early on and then he never relented. And it just, it was like roots to a tree or whatever. They think of new things every day that would affect my ability to be who I really am and what I aspire to be. Look, I'm a kid from St. Paul, Minnesota, who grew up in the 50s and the 60s and baseball was my favorite sport and I just wanted to live my dream. At 12 years old, I can tell you, I wanna play professional baseball. And they'd pop you in the head and say, you don't know what you're talking about. Because no one preceded me. I said, "Yes, I do." And you finally live in your dream. You've shared, I shared it with my, you know, you're making more money than anyone in the family ever made. More high profile, the name recognition. I'm doing what I love and I love what I do and I'm good at it. I'm excited. And you just kind of rip someone's heart out.  DG: Yeah, it's really, you're painting this picture of, as you said, a kid who grew up in St. Paul with a dream. And I know you could have played any of a number of professional sports. You could have gone to the NBA. You could've gone to NFL. But you chose baseball and you were kind of on this extraordinary path, chasing a dream, and getting to New York and signing that big contract must've been like such a big moment in that dream. And then someone comes and just, you know, as you're describing, like starts trying to crush it at every turn. MUSIC DG: I can imagine just, just, just the human reaction to that.  DW: Oh yeah so and that's what happened you learn to be resilient overcome obstacles have a game plan to go to work every day. I'll just say that it's kind of like I had a lot of friends in boxing I knew that and they would tell me that you know you go into a match you have to have really kind of three strategies: it's either all offense, sometimes defense, rope-a-dope, absorb, and other times, counterpunch. They come at you, and bop, you hit them. You come back at them. And so I had to choose every day or every week or every series or every month or every year, how am I gonna come at them? Because you can't stay silent and just absorb it all the time. You can't be on the offense all the times. People say, ah, be quiet, play baseball. Shut up and dribble, all that kind of, I don't need all the outside noise. And sometimes I'd have to go to it if I had something to say. We wait till I went to a favorable city or we go to the Twin Cities. We're playing the Twins and I'd hold a press conference and I could see them the suite next door, you know, red face, vein in the neck popping, that's right.   DG: What Dave's talking about here is basically his attempt at getting back at George Steinbrenner. In 1982, just one year into his 10 years on the Yankees, he sued Steinbrenner for breach of contract. Per their contract, Steinbrenner was supposed to be making $300,000 payments every year to Dave's foundation. But in Dave's first year on the team, Steinbrenner only paid half of that and explicitly stated that he would not pay the rest of it. So Dave sued him for almost $3 million and held a press conference outside the city to let everybody know. For the record, a few months later, the lawsuit was resolved when Dave and Steinbrenner reached a private settlement out of court. It's crazy. How is that not a distraction from the baseball? DW: It is. DG: Like, if you're, if you holding dueling press conferences with your owner, I mean, that just sounds, how do you focus?  DW: Well, all of these are some of the strategies and methodologies I talk about in the book. But put it this way, people say, but hey, did it motivate you to be better? And as good as I was, I would have been better if I ever had the help and support. So no matter how good I was, I would have been better. Because, and you just had to, I had to maintain a high record of performance on a daily basis. It may not have been the highest performance, like there were times I thought I could lead the league in home runs and you know, everybody gets giddy about home runs. Yeah, I could hit 45 home runs and hit 215 for those who baseball fans under, That's not. That's not a good ballplayer. That's not the kind of player I want it to be. So I had to ensure that I always had productivity at a high level in every area. It may not have been the highest of the entire league, but I was normally always in the top 10 players in the game.  DG: Stay with us. We have a whole lot more from Dave Winfield coming up next here on sports in America. Welcome back to Sports in America, and here's more from our conversation with MLB All-Star Dave Winfield. I think about some of the at-bats that we know about. Like, I think your 11th inning hit in the World Series when you were playing for the Blue Jays against the Braves. Like, is there an at-bat or an inning that kind of replays in your mind and you go back to with just like nostalgia and good feelings that may or may not have been one that we you know, have seen replayed on TV over the years.  DW: There is, with all the accolades and awards, the one that I will, my favorite, I was with Toronto in 1992. And I got the game winning hit. MUSIC DW: I drove in two runs, I doubled down a left field line and you stand in on. In hostile territory, if you will, in Atlanta. There's 50,000 people and 49,250 of them are silent. You only have a little small section of people who are rooting for me, standing and cheering, and you're standing in the middle of the stadium. To me, that's better as good as hitting a home run to win it, because we still got the pressure on the opposition with what I did. But that's the way I used to end every practice if I could. You know we're playing doing whatever and then you take that last at bat boom and you say base hit, we win, then you can go home. You don't get up the last at bat you said oh I struck out let me just go home and cry in my milk, you know, it's like it ended on a good note. And so that one I mean there are times I hit you know there's a lot of things you do in baseball when you play as long as I did. I mean, there's some bonehead plays. There are funny instances. I mean, wasn't necessarily funny at the time. Accidentally hitting a seagull and after he killed it on the field. DG: You hit a seagull that fell onto the field? Like you literally hit it with the ball and watched it.... DW: Yeah, he was on the field and finished playing catch with my teammate and the ball skipped on the turf, bam, killed the bird.  BROADCASTER: Yankee superstar Dave Winfield was flying high last night. He had three hits, two baseballs, and a seagull.  DW: The fans, once they saw what was happening, they were booing, and every time they booed me, I got a bam, basically. Oh, God. Bam, knocked in the face. But someone filed a complaint, cruelly to animals. And after the game, we're playing the Blue Jays. They took me downtown, and someone had filed a complain. They said, we don't want to do this, man. The seagull is a scavenger. We know what, you didn't do it on purpose. DG: Wait, seriously, you were literally brought up on charges of animal cruelty for? DW: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, and it was the last day before the Yankees before we went back to New York.  DG: What is your advice to young ballplayers who are on the cusp of one of those mega contracts like you were? I mean, obviously we see it all the time these days, but what advice do you have for these young stars today?  DW: Yeah, well, you know, even starting around when I start getting got a really good contract at the time, that's when people start paying attention. Man, athletes can make this kind of money. I mean, now guys make, that's their meal money for the year. What we made for an entire season. In fact are you  DG: But you were the, but you were there back then. I mean, it was massive.  DW: Oh, yeah. Well, in fact, I went from when you were rookie playing baseball in 1973, you got paid $15,000 a year. The average salary was $35,000 dollars a year, and there were a couple of guys maybe making 100 plus, you know, I know we got to put it in context. But the point is today with guys making, I mean, multi million, they really have to get a financial adviser. It's like a person that would win the lottery. There's nobody out there how to handle, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. It's complex. And if they don't learn, they won't have it at the end. Yeah, keep taking a private jet every day. That's cool, you know, keep putting the necklaces, the diamonds around your neck, all these. I was fortunate, I did a lot of reading. I mean, there was nobody in my family that had a lot. And there's, I mention a couple of stories about how I knew very little about finances early on.  DG: What do you wish you had known? Like, what do you look back and say, God, I wish I had been smarter about it?  DW: Well, the point is, what I get to is that if I didn't know it the first time, I know it, the second time. One quote that I say, the less you know about anything, but let's just take money, the less, you know, the more it's gonna cost you. Cause you have to hire somebody to do this, that or the other. I mean, so you really need protection and you really have to try to find your cabinet of good people around you, very hard to do. DG: You know you mentioned six cities that you played in in your career. You chose the Padres cap for Cooperstown which was seen as probably one of the strongest statements that a Hall of Famer has has ever made in many ways given sort of your journey. What meaning should we take from that?  DW: And I write about it in the book too, you know, how I had to wrestle with this because I split almost equally the amount of time between the Yankees and San Diego. Everybody contributed to my overall success. I love the teams for that, you know, Toronto, Minnesota, Cleveland, and the Angels that played smaller supporting roles. But with the Padres, that was the team that drafted me first and they gave me a chance to play. I went right to the major leagues. And you have to understand when I left the Yankees, and after there was no... "I'm sorry, Dave. We love you. You're good. You're all right, man. We'd like to have you around." or there was none of that. So I'm thinking, even if I went into the Hall of Fame with a Yankee hat, would they even show up? It was that strained. It was that different.  DG: Like imagining in your mind like making the effort to honor the Yankees and being there in Cooperstown and then just not feeling appreciated, again.  DW: Not being appreciated, yeah, I didn't know really I had no idea if they would ever even show up or not  DG: God, that's that's a really hard thing to contemplate. DW: So it kind of puts in perspective, huh? DG: Yeah before Steinbrenner died To what extent do you feel like you made peace with him?  DW: I don't know how to balance it. Let's just say we had a few conversations that people don't really know about. And he never really said, I can say this, he never really said why he did the things he did to me. When he said, I'm very happy for you, I'm proud of you. And there were a couple other things. I want you to read, I want people to read about this more than just tell you everything now because these are untold stories. My wife had a lot to do with this, too. I got a great wife that says, you know what? Before he's gone, you guys should have some type of hit together. But the point is, sometimes there's things that people do to you you'll never forget. You can forgive, but you'll never forget. It's impossible to forget. It dominated, at that time in my life, the negative. If I think about it, I haven't really put it terms this way, but... I'd say if it was 10, 12 years and I'm 30, at least 25% of your life, you're dealing with some harsh, negative realities. So it's hard to forget that, you know, or over some people couldn't overcome it. Some people would have been a basket case or done something crazy. And it didn't get me either way.  DG: If he were alive today, as you're releasing this book and these untold stories, what would you want him to understand about that period of time?  DW: It's not so much what I'd try to tell him. I'd say, let's take a trip on up to St. Paul, Minnesota. Let's look at this statue and what it says. Let's see what the people say about me, who knew me, who know me my entire life. He always knew what kind of person I was, but never admitted it. Never, for whatever reason. It's the kind of guy he was. I don't really know. You know, it's not the kind of people I hang around all the time, you know, with those kind of approaches to life. But, he knew I was a positive, whether they ever said it or not, leadership and the Yankee clubhouse. You can put it, you could say it was somebody else, but it wasn't. The guys would tell you if you walked in there, who was protecting them, who's looking out for them when there's a gathering, whose house do they come to when they want to go to a charitable event, see what Dave is doing. I don't want people to think that this book, my memoir is solely about. Steinbrenner and the Yankees. Plays a prominent role and people know because it was in their face. This is about excellence, sports excellence, Black excellence. It's generational stuff and nobody has a story like this. They just don't because it didn't happen to anybody else..  DG: Dave, one of the messages that you send in your book is that your fights with George Steinbrenner, they tell us something bigger about, you know, struggles in our society, in American life. MUSIC DG: What connection do you make there for us? What can we learn about kind of American life today from what you went through?  DW: Hmm. Well, life is not easy, life is never a straight line to your dreams and from your aspirations to achievement, tell my kids that all the time. Look you're going to run into some obstacles and rough sledding and you have to find there's different methods and strategies and in ways that you have to approach it. I go into a little detail in something in the book. I mentioned that, what does it take to really, you know, achieve, be at the top? There's some cultural differences from, also from what I'm telling you, from African-American man in America, starting off, you know, the starting line and the finish line are in different places, you know at different times. And, you know, it's not always a level playing field. So you have to approach things a little bit differently. Quite honestly, I'm telling you that. I know you know that and most of your audience probably recognizes that too, whether they say it or not, but it's true.  DG: Well Dave Winfield, it's been a real honor and pleasure talking to you and I'm excited for you to get your story out into the world and congratulations on the book and just really, really enjoyed the conversation. DW: Thank you, it has been a pleasure. DG: That was Major League Baseball legend Dave Winfield. MUSIC DG: Next time on Sports in America, how did an undersized college walk-on come to lead one of the stingiest secondaries in NFL history?  T.J. WARD: A lot of guys on our defense really had a chip on our shoulder, right?  DG: We were talking with Super Bowl champion, safety T.J. Ward about having to hit above his weight class to get noticed, overcoming horrific injuries and how the safety position has evolved in today's NFL.  TW: You gotta aim lower, like, I hit guys running with the football. You know, I tackle strong, when I hit you, you're going straight down. It was no wrestling.  DG: We're doing whatever it takes to bring the runner down. Next time on Sports in America. This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.  Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.  Our engineers are Mike Villers and Charlie Kaier. Our theme music is composed by Emma Munger. Our talent booker is Britt Kahn. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.  Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports, with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, you know, wherever you get your podcasts.  And we also wanna hear from you. How about you drop us a line? You can write us at sportsinamerica@whyy.org. That’s sportsinamerica@whyy.org. Thanks, everyone. And we will see you next time for Sports in America.