The San Diego Padres' season ended this month after a memorable, though brief, playoff run. Even without that elusive World Series title, the Padres remain a beloved franchise in San Diego.
But the Padres’ lasting impact in San Diego did not come about overnight. It took star players like Dave Winfield, who laid the foundation for the team we know today.
The Baseball Hall of Famer reflects on that legacy in his book, “Touching All the Bases: A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx.”
Winfield sat down with KPBS Roundtable host Andrew Bracken to talk about his story, which explores not only his incredible, turbulent life in baseball, but also the history of San Diego.
You began your career with the Padres in 1973. You describe it in your book as being “a new team in a growing city.” What were your first impressions of San Diego when you arrived?
Winfield: Well, here I'm freshly minted out of college, the University of Minnesota, and it was only the second time I ever set foot in San Diego. And in life, I had probably been to three Major League Baseball games, and all of a sudden I'm on a field with major league players against people like Henry Aaron and Willie Mays and Tom Seaver, and the field was humongous.
And the air was heavy, and the walls were high and very far away. And I said, “I think there's a lot that I'm going to have to learn,” because I was playing against men and I was still a boy. I'm 20 years old and away from home, really for the first time, starting my professional career. So there was a lot I had to learn.
You write that when you started, you didn't even really have a place. You just kind of crashed with a teammate in Mission Valley. What was Mission Valley like at that time?
Winfield: Well, when I look at things now, everything is so built up. I mean, there were empty hills, there were empty spaces along the way if you're driving, but now every space is taken. It's a new city, it's a new development. So the city has grown tremendously. But San Diego always had good bones to it. Nowadays, people say, “What city would you recommend?” They come to America. I say, “You might want to try San Diego first.”
I mean you also talk about some of the struggles of being in an early franchise ,and you nearly left town early soon after you arrived.
Winfield: People remember when Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, bought the team at the beginning of the 1974 season, but the team was destined to go to Washington D.C., because it wasn't making it in San Diego. But the team stayed here. Ray Kroc owned the team for a while. And it was different. I'm an All-Star — not in the beginning, Hall of Fame and all that stuff — but when I started my very first game, it was really underwhelming. There were 5,400 people at the game.
You also talk about your own struggles here and also just being in San Diego. You said San Diego had plenty of “sol”, but it didn't have any “soul”. What was your experience like?
Winfield: Well, it was different. It was a diverse community. It was white, it was Latino, there was a Black community. It was military, it was a lot of the surfing environment. It was totally different to me. Even listening to the radio, I'm hearing the Spanish language and everything.
So, it was interesting to try to absorb everything while I was trying to learn to play the game at a higher level. Because I was a pitcher, largely in college, and then all of a sudden I had to play in the outfield the very first day.
And not to mention you were also a basketball star, and you got drafted as a football player. You had a lot going for you, but you did find your game here in the major leagues. You played in San Diego for eight years and then went on to sign a then-record contract with the New York Yankees. A lot of your book kind of reflects on this period, and the subtitle of your book is “Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx.” You signed this immense contract moving to the Yankees, and then a central character in the book came up and that's New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Talk about that relationship and why you wanted to reflect on it.
Winfield: Well, as people read my book, they should know that it's not just a normal sports book. I hit a lot of home runs, I was a world champion and all that. But a lot of people have that kind of story.
Growing up without a lot of money, my parents were divorced, so I could have fallen by the wayside, all of those things. But as I'm making my way up the ladder, trying to do what I always envisioned as a youngster — to be a professional baseball player — and all of a sudden I reached the ranks where I'm the No. 1 pick. The Yankees wanted me, paid me more money than anyone ever made in team sports, any sport.
And the owner of the team told me about a month after I was there, for no particular reason: “I'm not going to pay you all your money. And if you don't like it, sue me.”
As I say these things, even though it's a smile on my face, it's a wry smile. And it's not because I was happy, and not because it was funny. But every day I went to work for the next decade, it was a very toxic workplace, as people would call it today.
Every day I went to work for the next decade, it was a very toxic workplace.— Dave Winfield
Reading your book, you could really feel that. For those that may not know George Steinbrenner, some of them may only know him from "Seinfeld" in this cartoonish character. But he would fire managers and rehire them. You really get a sense of a very turbulent space and you describe it as a toxic workplace. How did you think about it then, and how did you approach it? Especially being a professional athlete, having those stressors and responsibilities on your shoulders as well.
Winfield: Well, it's something that I never imagined would happen because I knew that I brought value to a ballclub. I came there, I'm a serious worker, I brought value, I brought leadership, I brought community service. I put big numbers up on the board.
If you wanted to win, you'd look for a guy like me. And totally committed to the service of that organization. And for whatever reasons — and we never got to the bottom of it, even in his later life, and we had a face-to-face discussion to bury the hatchet, if you will, or at least man-to-man talk — I asked him, “Why did you do these things?” And he could never answer.
And if somebody doesn't know why they do really despicable, underhanded, illegal things to another individual, and that's the way you manage your ballclub, that's not really the best way. People would say, "He does it because he wants to win." You don't treat people the way I was treated.
I'm trying to accomplish my dream, and you're intentionally standing in the way of it.— Dave Winfield
What did you learn about power and leadership? You've been talking about this through what you went through with George Steinbrenner because it's also a book about you exploring your own power, right?
Winfield: Yeah. Well, it works both ways. It's like how did I survive? How did I thrive? How did I deal with negative circumstances? Every day I went to work, day after day, season after season, year after year.
And then, on the other hand, you look at somebody that's as powerful and as visible as this individual was. Why would you manage a multimillion-dollar organization and you're hurting your best assets? You're trying to destroy, demean, undermine them.
That is not the best way to succeed at business, but he had the history of the Yankees behind him. They've won 27 championships. There are many teams that have never won once. So they figure, whatever you do, “Let him slide. Let him treat people the way he treats them, and they've been successful. So be quiet and just keep playing baseball.” But that wasn't me.
Especially when you're doing things to me that affected my career, my vision, my legacy, my purpose in life. That small window of time, I'm trying to accomplish my dream, and you're intentionally standing in the way of it. So there is a serious rub, as we would say. And I had to battle it, and I did in many different ways, and it changed all the time.
You started writing this book in 2020, around the time of George Floyd's murder, leading to a lot of reflections on race in America and our history. And I'm just wondering, how did that period reshape how you thought about your own experience as a Black ballplayer in your time?
Winfield: When I played, the people that performed in the game — African Americans — were 20%, so I was always comfortable with the diversity and the inclusion of people that played in the sport. But there was a part of me that wondered, “Why would this gentleman that owned the team treat me in the way he did when I am his best asset?”
There's something more to it. It never was discussed publicly, it never was put out there in the open, but in the back of my mind, I thought, “Does this have something to do with race or whatever?” And on one hand, I could see the owner of the team doing things for the historically Black colleges.
But, you know, I grew up in a time that was very turbulent in America. I mean, you turn on TV and hear the governor of Alabama saying, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Or you couldn't go to any school that you wanted to go to. You couldn't have any job you wanted to. I saw that in my community, I saw it with my family — intelligent people — and their limitations on jobs that they could get.
So, of course, I think that's always a part of your thinking, but it didn't carry out into my actions, the way I dealt with people because where I grew up, with my friends, it was always a diverse group of people. So, to me, it never really mattered.
My friends were everything, but still, in the back of my mind, when I was working for my job, my career, I said “What's going on here? There's something a little bit off.”
I made the right choice going to San Diego, and I have no apologies or anything like that.— Dave Winfield
So when you were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, you had a choice of which team to go in, which hat you wanted to wear. And you ended up choosing the Padres hat. You became the first Padres player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, not as a Yankee. Was that a hard decision for you to make?
Winfield: Yes. It was a hard decision. Even though I played 22 years, six teams, both leagues, both coasts, both countries, and I started here. The Padres gave me my chance right out of college. I did my first everything here: base hit, home run, RBI, win, All-Star Game, captain of the team, all kinds of things.
The Yankees — people thought by the end of my career, because that's when I was a mature ballplayer, I'm an All-Star every year, one of the best in the top 10 probably every year that I played for, 12 All-Star Games in a row — people would think, “Oh, you want to be associated with the Yankees.”
But when I finished my career, the truth of the matter was, it was between the team that brought me there and invested in me and believed in me, or do I just go to a team that has treated me very badly for a decade, for almost 40% of my career? Do I want to just go along for the ride and say that I'm a Yankee?
And I had no relationship. The owner of the team determined if there was a relationship, and we had none. And so I didn't know, even if I had chosen New York, would they even show up to support me? That's how different the situation was. But I made the right choice going to San Diego, and I have no apologies or anything like that.
This book is your coming to terms with a lot of this toxic environment you talked about and your complicated relationship with not just George Steinbrenner, but other owners and kind of the difficult positions you were put in. But, being an athlete today, I think it's a lot more common for athletes to come out and be accepted to talk publicly about their mental health struggles. How do you think being a professional athlete has changed in your view?
Winfield: Things that I did in the '70s — athlete advocacy. I was a member of the Players Association, the union. When I started, you made nothing. $15,000 a year. That's not meal money. That's for the entire season that we would make.
There were also things related to the All-Star Game that I started here when I played for San Diego, like all of the festivities during All-Star week. That started here in San Diego because of something that I did. Support of the Negro League players — they never considered that. That's another thing that I was involved in making happen. There are so many things that are different.
There's technology in terms of the way they teach guys how to play the game, and it's not always correct. I wouldn't recommend going simply to the computer and using analytics and statistics to try to teach a person to play.
But I would always recommend it to young people. It's a great game. It's something that I loved, and I would tell parents, “Let kids play another sport,” because they may not be any good in baseball, and they should play soccer, tennis, football, anything else too.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
