{"id":606028,"date":"2026-04-14T10:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T10:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606028\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T10:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T10:16:09","slug":"dave-winfield-these-are-the-3-best-leaders-from-my-mlb-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606028\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Winfield: These are the 3 best leaders from my MLB career"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dave Winfield played 22 years in Major League Baseball, starring for teams including the San Diego Padres and New York Yankees, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001. His memoir<\/a>, \u201cTouching All the Bases,\u201d will be released in September.<\/p>\n

These are the three best leaders he came across during his MLB career.<\/p>\n

Marvin Miller, executive director of the MLB Players Association<\/p>\n

He is one of the most impactful leaders in the history of professional baseball.<\/p>\n

I was in the league for nine of his 16 years as executive director. He just solidified my way of thinking about the relationship between Major League Baseball and the players. I was immediately drawn in. He was soft in his words, but he talked about fairness and what it took to accomplish things in negotiations.<\/p>\n

I was learning how to become the CEO or the executive of my own professional life.<\/p>\n

I was not only in meetings with him, but I sat on long flights next to him and we talked about the issues: professional sports, professional baseball, bargaining. He was a mentor to a large extent and impacted my way of thinking and how much time I allocated to the benefit and well-being of the players. I guess you could multiply that many times for all the people I was able to impact, not only as a player representative but in later years working with the union.<\/p>\n

Back then, players didn\u2019t make anything. You had to get a job in the offseason. No multiyear contracts. No free agency. No arbitration. Nobody retired to their yacht or their ranch. It wasn\u2019t like that.<\/p>\n

He just had the ability to understand the situation, share it among the members and let the members know that it was all about them; that they were going to be the leaders and, many times, the spokespersons for what they were trying to accomplish. It wasn\u2019t Marvin always up front \u2014 not at all. And he certainly didn\u2019t have the loudest voice. But it\u2019s not the volume of your voice that matters; it\u2019s your wisdom and your ability to convey that. People pick that up.<\/p>\n

A lot of the key, most influential players in the game stepped forward and stepped up to be the voice for the other players when it could have been perilous to a player\u2019s career back then.<\/p>\n

His power was organizing and educating the players and having them take charge. He could educate people to take charge of their own destiny.<\/p>\n

Frank Robinson, player-manager for Cleveland<\/p>\n

We were never on the same team, and he never managed me. However, there were plenty of stories and lore about Frank Robinson. The grit and the hard-nosed play. He was one of those guys: Yeah, you can hit me with a pitch, but I\u2019m going to do some damage to you.<\/p>\n

Frank was the first Black manager in Major League Baseball in 1975. And to be a player-manager? That\u2019s doubly hard, and I know they weren\u2019t paying him twice as much.<\/p>\n

Frank was a legend on the field; he is a Hall of Famer. I heard this story: When Frank was the player-manager for Cleveland, one of his players was coming up to bat in a critical situation late in a game. Frank put himself in the game to hit \u2014 and I believe he hit a home run. The quote I heard was: \u201cYou can\u2019t put a boy in to do a man\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was gruff and rough-edged to many people. People didn\u2019t mess with Frank.<\/p>\n

Frank\u2019s leadership style was more like a military taskmaster. You go into the Marines and you think you know what you\u2019re doing; you don\u2019t know anything. But you come out and you\u2019re much better off. They\u2019ve taught you a lot, and you\u2019ve improved as a person. That was Frank. Sometimes, you need that hard learning. He was not going to babysit you. Sometimes, you need that tough love to help you advance.<\/p>\n

A number of players who played for him told me, \u201cFrank was tough, man, but he gave me some ideas on how to improve my game, how to go about it, how not to make excuses.\u201d Frank was certainly not going to listen to any excuses. Either you did or you didn\u2019t with him.<\/p>\n

He was a really good manager. And he was a barrier breaker from racism that was still in your face. One time, the general manager for the Dodgers, Al Campanis, said that Blacks \u201cmay not have some of the necessities to be, let\u2019s say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.\u201d It struck a chord in me.<\/p>\n

No one could diminish Frank\u2019s desire for fair treatment, not only for himself but for others who came after him. There are scores of people who are grateful for the path Frank took to demonstrate that people of color could handle any aspect of the baseball industry.<\/p>\n

There has to be a first in many industries and trades. I, for one, am happy that Frank Robinson was one of those leaders when I had my career. I saw that doors could be opened, and my confidence was raised.<\/p>\n

Joe Morgan, Hall of Fame second baseman<\/p>\n

Although Joe and I were never teammates, I didn\u2019t have to play with him to understand his leadership; I could see the influence and impact he had.<\/p>\n

The man was MVP of the National League two years in a row when I came into the league. Growing up in Minnesota, I rarely saw the National League play. When I finally saw him play, I said, \u201cHow can a dude that small be so dynamic?\u201d I took notes about what made him special on a yellow pad. He could do it all.<\/p>\n

Joe was part of one of the best teams of all time, the Big Red Machine. Joe was a leader among a team of leaders. He had Pete Rose. He had Tony P\u00e9rez. He had Johnny Bench. He had Ken Griffey Sr. And a Hall of Fame manager, Sparky Anderson. Everybody impacted that team one way or another, but most of them told me that Joe Morgan may be diminutive in size, but he was a Goliath on that team.<\/p>\n

When Joe talked, people listened.<\/p>\n

Most people could go to a good team, and they would let the players who were there already shine their light and not try to get in their way. Joe was confident among any group of players. There aren\u2019t many teams that will ever be as big and important as the guys on the Big Red Machine. He more than held his own.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s cool is that Joe evolved as a player. Because the Joe Morgan in Houston wasn\u2019t anything that you\u2019d write home about. He wasn\u2019t a great leader or necessarily a great teammate in the beginning of his career. It took him years to evolve and grow. By the time he got to Cincinnati on a very important stage, he was ready for his leadership and charisma to flourish.<\/p>\n

I got to know him better once he was in the Hall of Fame. We talked about a variety of issues: If guys used steroids, what should we do? People\u2019s personalities and how he approached them. I told him, \u201cMan, I wished we had played together. We would have been great teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 As told to Jayson Jenks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,1186,5257,5258,5262,2364,591,2704,17796,1189,85,3276,5161],"class_list":{"0":"post-606028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-baltimore-orioles","11":"tag-cincinnati-reds","12":"tag-cleveland-guardians","13":"tag-los-angeles-angels","14":"tag-minnesota-twins","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-new-york-yankees","17":"tag-peak","18":"tag-san-diego-padres","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-sports-business","21":"tag-toronto-blue-jays"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}