March 31, 2009 3:01 PM

Hall of Famer Winfield at Bat for ESPN's ‘Baseball Tonight'

Dave Winfield has joined ESPN as a “Baseball Tonight” analyst, beginning April 5 on ESPN2.

Mr. Winfield will work with host Karl Ravech and analysts Peter Gammons and John Kruk on Sundays and some Mondays during the Major League Baseball season.

His first appearance on April 5 will lead into the Opening Night game between Atlanta and Philadelphia at 8 p.m.

Mr. Winfield was in the major leagues for 22 years, playing for the San Diego Padres, New York Yankees, California Angels, Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians. He was a 12-time All-Star and a seven-time Gold Glove winner. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001.

“We're thrilled to add Dave Winfield to our ‘Baseball Tonight' team,” Norby Williamson, executive vice president of production, said in a statement. “He will be able to draw from his experiences as a Hall of Fame talent and world champion who has been a pioneer for the game in various capacities, both on and off the field. We welcome his unique voice and believe he will be a great addition to ESPN.”

Winfield basks in historic glow

By Nick Canepa San Diego Union-Tribune Columnist

Hall of Famer Dave Winfield was in Washington for President Barack Obama's inauguration. (Getty Images)

this country's greatest athletes, Dave Winfield occupies a wing. By the time he left the University of Minnesota in 1973, he had become the first man to be drafted in three sports – baseball, football and basketball.

Winfield wisely chose baseball. Drafted by the Padres, with whom he spent eight seasons, he never rode a minor league bus. He's one of seven players to collect 3,000 hits and hit 450 home runs. In 2001, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2006, he became a charter member of the College Baseball Hall of Fame.

Currently a Padres vice president, he has been involved in too much charitable work to get all of it in this space. He has received honorary doctorates. He has a movie star voice and has used it on television and stage and in public speaking. He has served as a college trustee.

David Mark Winfield has been and done many things, but nothing that happened in his 57 years fully prepared him for yesterday, even though he was there, in Washington D.C., some 80 yards from where Barack Obama raised his hand.

He never thought he'd live to see an African-American sworn into office as president. Nor did I. But I'm not black, so I can't tell anyone what it's like to be black, what yesterday felt like to blacks, and I'm not about to try.

“Every person of color you mention or talk to will tell you the same thing,” Winfield was saying by phone after Obama's inaugural address. “That door never was going to be open. Two years ago, it wasn't even on the horizon. But Barack Obama just thought it was time to step out and go wide, make an end run. He didn't go though the middle of the system.

“He went for it and it worked. People of color, like myself, we've always felt we can do what everyone else can do. I had this bib for my son (David II) 14 years ago. It said, 'Future President.' But this – we couldn't have expected this now. Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King. The riots. These things happened in my lifetime. People weren't truly free.”

Having been to certain parts of the deep South, I'm not so sure everyone still is considered free in many eyes. But this was a special moment. And Winfield, rarely one to publicly speak politics – “This is a first for me” – was eager to describe what he saw and felt yesterday, as he moved among the more than 1 million gathered for the event. The 6-foot-6 Winfield no doubt had a better view than most.

“I just wanted to go to this inauguration,” he said. “I've been to others. I've met five presidents. But this was a watershed moment in our history. I felt I had to participate, so my wife (Tonya) and I soaked it all in. I've never seen so many people, and I've been in crowds. Walk a mile in any direction, and it was like a ballpark just emptied.”

What Winfield felt was the rebirth of a nation.

“Even with all the people, what struck me was everyone being so cordial, so upbeat,” he said. “There was no pushing or shoving. There was a quiet reverence. When there's a transition of power, people respect that, but so many people wanted to be there. We turned a page in American history.

“To see the most powerful man in the world, an African-American, at the podium – how did this young person make this political machine in such a short period of time?”

Winfield grew up in St. Paul, Minn., and never really knew segregation as a youth, even in his own neighborhood. But he knew it was there. Athletics didn't keep him from reading and watching and learning, even if so much of what didn't make sense was taking place a real world away.

“I looked at it from afar,” he said. “It didn't shape my life or the way I lived. I think I had people of every color and every background leave an imprint on what Dave Winfield was, but I was aware of everything. And now, to see this . . . ”

Barack Obama has been in office one day, but he is more than a president. He is a Sinatra. An Elvis. The Beatles. More than anything, as he takes the bridge in raging seas, he represents hope, which is how he wants it.

“I think I was more emotional when he got elected,” Winfield said, “because it was unimaginable. I think there are a lot of people here, a whole segment of our society, who never felt vested in America, that it wasn't an even playing field. Just seeing the looks on their faces. It looked like America. Young people of all colors.

“We have a chance now. Anybody can do it. You can achieve anything. Everybody here feels good about America. I don't think anyone else who was running could have inspired people the way Obama has to date. I don't think it's close. He brought out the best and the brightest. It's history.”

It's not very often when we're around for a day when a page is turned.

MLB Network airs special tribute to Negro Leagues on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2009
Never-before aired documentary narrated by Hall of Famer and Negro League advocate Dave Winfield

MLB Network will pay tribute to the Negro Leagues with the debut documentary Pride and Perseverance: The Story of the Negro Leagues, airing at 9:00 p.m. ET on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Monday, January 19. This never before aired one-hour special is narrated by Hall of Famer and Negro Leagues advocate Dave Winfield. Debuting on the eve of President-elect Barack Obama's historic inauguration, the documentary will depict the history of African Americans in the Negro Leagues and Major League Baseball.

Pride and Perseverance: The Story of the Negro Leagues will feature the history of Negro Leagues baseball players in the early half of the century leading up to the modern era's African-American Major League Baseball players. Produced by Major League Baseball Productions, Pride and Perseverance: The Story of the Negro Leagues, will showcase rarely seen footage from the 1920s through 1950s that feature the birth of the Negro Leagues, and that depict both the struggles endured and milestones achieved by its players. Footage will also highlight the Negro Leagues' innovations that helped shape modern day baseball, such as the Leagues' usage of portable light towers to enable games to be played after dusk for the first time ever.

The program includes Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers and on April 15, 1947 becoming the first African American in the modern era to play on a Major League team.

"The impact of the Negro Leagues changed not only the sport of baseball, but our culture and society," said Tony Petitti, President and Chief Executive Officer of Major League Baseball Network. "This documentary will take our viewers through this important milestone in American history."

"As the United States prepares to welcome our first African American President, this special will help paint the picture of how baseball played a role in leading up to this moment," said Winfield. "The Negro Leagues players were some of the best athletes of all-time and we hope this special can tell their story to a broader audience."

Winfield played an integral role in the Special Negro Leagues Player Draft in 2008, which allowed for all 30 teams to ceremonially draft a player whose career included the Negro Leagues.

MLB Network launched in approximately 50 million cable and satellite homes on January 1, 2009 as the largest debut in cable television history, exceeding any other cable television launch by approximately 20 million. With live games, original programming, highlights, classic games, and coverage of baseball events, MLB Network is the ultimate television destination for baseball fans. For more information, go to mlbnetwork.com.

DAVE WINFIELD'S BRAINCHILD THRILLS NEGRO LEAGUERS
By Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports Jun 4, 7:43 pm EDT

Emilio “Millito” Navarro boarded a jet in San Juan on Wednesday morning, three months before his 103rd birthday.
He was bound for Orlando, Fla., bound for Major League Baseball’s amateur draft, bound for the New York Yankees, his favorite team. And Robinson
Cano had better break out of that slump.

“Now that I’ve been drafted,” Navarro said, “I’m ready right now to play second base. I might take his job.”
In Memphis, somebody ought to fetch one of those low-hanging, welt-raising switches, because Joe B. Scott is fixing to be a ballplayer again. He’s 87.

“I love baseball,” he said. “I used to get a whipping for playing it. My mother used to whip me on Thursdays and Sundays. Those were my whipping days
because she knew I was on the ballfield. But I didn’t cry when she whipped me.”

He’ll be selected by the Milwaukee Brewers in the draft. Held, of course, on a Thursday.

In San Diego, Neale “Bobo” Henderson packed for Orlando. He’ll be 78 in three weeks. Sadly, his wife, Annie, is ill and won’t accompany him. But he’s
waited the better part of a lifetime for this, to be draft-day eligible, draft-day worthy, draft-day remembered. So he’ll leave Annie behind for a few days,
report for duty 60 years coming, dust himself off again and get on with it. He’ll be drafted by the Los Angeles Angels.

Rogers Hornsby, a minor league manager and occasional scout in the 1940s, watched Henderson play a few games. Henderson said the Hall-of-Fame
second baseman called him “The California Comet.”

“I was known for my head-first slides,” he said. “Rogers Hornsby really liked my head-first slides.”

Yes, he’ll dust himself off one more time.

Navarro, Scott, Henderson and 27 other former Negro Leaguers will be drafted in a pre-draft ceremony, a tribute formulated by Hall-of-Famer Dave
Winfield and embraced by Major League Baseball.Aging men (and one woman, Mamie “Peanut” Johnson) who once were denied access to the big
leagues but not the national pastime, who abided the rules of a narrow-minded era, who made do in a separate-and-not-equal game, smiled gently and
accepted with true graciousness.

Navarro, the first Puerto Rican to play in the Negro Leagues, is the oldest living professional ballplayer. Scott played 20 years in the Negro Leagues,
some of them alongside Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell. Henderson was a bat boy for the Kansas City Monarchs, wore No. 3 as a high schooler to
honor Babe Ruth, and once met Ruth himself. A framed photo of that moment hangs in his home, Henderson’s team surrounding The Babe, Henderson
shaking Ruth’s hand. Then he grew up to play for those Monarchs.

They have stories, lives that went on without the game, careers stunted by circumstance. Navarro ran a ballpark in Puerto Rico, then taught school. Scott
drove a truck. Henderson evangelized on the game in neighborhoods like the ones in which he was raised.

“I’m not bitter,” Henderson said. “God has been good to me. I put all the prejudice aside.”

The shame of that time, it belongs to somebody else. It is not their burden.

“If that’s your door and it’s closed, I don’t have any regrets about that,” Scott said. “Let that door be closed. Nope, I don’t have no regrets myself.”

Winfield sat recently in a dining room just off Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. This was his dream, or close enough to it. In a career that spanned 22
seasons and resulted in some wall space in Cooperstown, Winfield came to know and admire many of the old Negro Leaguers. In 1982, his second
season with the Yankees, Winfield’s phone rang in his Kansas City hotel room. It was Satchel Paige. He told Winfield he liked the way he played. He told
him he wanted to get together. The Yankees were playing that day, however, and then leaving town.

“You know what,” Winfield told Paige, “it’s going to have to be the next time we come through, in September. We’re going to have lunch or dinner or
whatever.”

Paige died three weeks later, on June 8.“So,” Winfield said, “I never got to meet him in person. But, he called me. Sure did.”

As the years passed, and his own career ended, and the living roster of former Negro Leaguers grew thin, Winfield felt a rising urgency to do right by the
ballplayers who’d come before him. He’d seen what a day at the ballpark ndash; the San Diego Padres, for whom he works as a vice president, honor the
Negro Leagues annually – did for the spirits of men who believed they were forgotten, or never known. And in 2006 he was in San Diego when 17 Negro
Leaguers were elected to the Hall of Fame, and Buck O’Neil was not. He drove back to Los Angeles in silence that day.

By the time he arrived home, he’d come up with a plan to draft Negro Leaguers, give them a new identity and a bond to today’s game.
“I kept thinking we should have done something for Buck,” Winfield said. “We should have made him a major leaguer. We should have made him a part of
our roster, our family, our team. Because he had never been those things. He had been a Negro League player and manager, coach, scout,
ambassador. Then he passed away later that year. So even though there’s not a lot of big names left, there’s a lot of good people.”

People such as Bobo Henderson and Joe Scott, “Prince” Joe Henry and Charley Pride, “Mule” Miles and ‘Li’l Catch’ Bailey. Maybe they would have been
big leaguers, maybe they wouldn’t have. At the time, all they knew was that they couldn’t have.

“This is about letting them share,” Winfield said. “They’re on the fringes of the baseball family. Bring them in a little closer. Let them share in what the
game has become. You have to build a platform and let people know that these guys are important. These guys were their heritage. Their connection to
the sport is important. That’s what it’s about, why they’re still alive.

“The main thing is I’m happy that we’re doing something this year. You wait too long and there’d be nobody left. I think we have one chance to do
something really good. It’ll be a great day.”

So, they readied themselves in San Juan and Memphis and San Diego, and they recalled people and events and laughter amid the darkness. They once
bunked in high school gymnasiums and in preachers’ guestrooms, but when they awoke they got to play again, and the game was worth it. Now they’ll
share a day with future major leaguers, among former major leaguers. They’ll be a part of it.

“Dave Winfield is an angel sent from heaven,” Henderson said. “That man has really worked hard for us. We are like Major League baseball players now.
This is God’s work. I hear it’s supposed to rain, but He’s going to make sure it’s going to be a sunny day down in Orlando.”