El Profe: Turning the Tables

“You must have an amazing autograph collection.”

That’s the comment I hear most often when people learn that the media credential I use to cover baseball games grants me pregame access to the field and sometimes includes clubhouse access.

“Oh, no!” I exclaim. Asking for autographs is strictly forbidden. A team will revoke your credentials quicker than an Aroldis Chapman fastball for such an infraction.

Ironically, I had the tables turned on me one time. A Hall of Famer asked me to sign something for him while at the ballpark.

Lost & Found

Shortly after my first book, Playing America’s Game, was published in 2007, I received an invitation to speak at the San Diego Padres’ Salute to the Negro Leagues. The invite came from Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, then executive vice president of the Padres.

The salute involved two days of events. The marquee events included a luncheon honoring Negro League players and a pregame ceremony before the Padres took on the visiting Red Sox.

The year’s guest list included Neale Henderson, Monte Irvin, Enrique Maroto, Walter McCoy, Don Newcombe, Jimmy Robinson, Armando Vásquez, and Negro League umpire Bob Motley. Also among the honorees was Luis Tiant, due to his Negro Leagues connection through his father.

Excited to renew my acquaintance with Vasquez and Robinson, and also to meet Luis Tiant for the first time, I arrived at Petco Park early for the luncheon. A few moments after I arrived, Dave Winfield entered the banquet room. He was a bit harried; not the norm for him.

After he greeted me, he excused himself to make a phone call.

The conversation I overhead left me stunned.

What put him in such a frenzied state? Perhaps one of the players was a last-minute cancellation? Or perhaps some other important component of the luncheon’s program or the evening pregame ceremony was left unaddressed?

Nope.

He was calling home because he had misplaced his copy of Playing America’s Game. My book was the source of his upset!

Tonya Earns the Save

After Dave got off the phone, I jokingly told him that I would happily send him another copy.

No, no. I had it with me this morning, he insisted. I was reading it on the plane just yesterday, highlighting different sections of the book in preparation for the day’s event, he added.

Now I was a bit incredulous. Surely, he was pulling my leg, trying to make me feel good.

Then I remembered that Winfield was a Big 10 product, a University of Minnesota undergraduate who had studied political science and communications. He likely wasn’t kidding about reading my book closely.

His disposition changed after a return phone call from his wife, Tonya. The book had been located and was en route to the ballpark.

Tables Turned

Just before the luncheon was set to start, Dave approached me with a satisfied look on his face. He opened his copy of my book to show me various sections he had highlighted. Proof was in the underlined passages; he had definitely spent time reading the book.

Then he turned the tables with a request.

Would you sign my book?

Whoa!

My baseball hero was asking me to sign his copy of my book. I smiled internally at the mere thought.

This was the stuff I never dreamed of as a Yankees fan rooting for No. 31 in the 1980s. Winfield was the reason my family and I always bought tickets in the right-field corner at Yankee Stadium whenever we went to a game — we had to get a good view of Winfield patrolling right-field. We were the Boricuas rooting in Winfield’s corner.

And now here we were more than 20 years later, on the other side of the country. And it was Winfield asking me to sign something for him — the book in which I tell the history of Latinos in baseball.

I am still amazed at the fact that my baseball hero actually got my autograph before I ever even asked for his.

Featured Image:  Focus on Sport

Inset Images: Adrian Burgos, Jr