Dave Winfield and his legendary home run
In a 1982 article in the Sporting News, a reporter quoted Dave Winfield about his transformation from pitcher to outfielder while playing summer baseball in Fairbanks for the Alaska Goldpanners.
“First time up I hit a grand-slam home run out of the park and onto the roof of a bowling alley,” Winfield said. “I began to play regularly in the outfield.”
He repeated something similar in his autobiography: “First worthwhile pitch I see, I take a tremendous cut and blast it out of the park and onto the roof of a bowling alley across the street.”
Winfield was the best all-around athlete who ever played for the Goldpanners, according to former General Manager Don Dennis.
But a curler he was not.
To be fair, the Fairbanks Curling Club does look a bit like a bowling alley from a distance. And Winfield was not in Fairbanks during curling season.
But now the curling emporium has a statue of Dave Winfield, who excelled on the mound and at the plate during his two summers playing for the Alaska Goldpanners in 1971-72 and went on to the big leagues.
“Drafted by five teams in five leagues in three major sports, Winfield chose baseball and compiled a first-ballot Hall of Fame career,” Doug Skipper wrote in this biography of the Minnesota marvel.
Winfield threw out the first pitch in the Midnight Sun Game Friday at about 10 p.m., more than a half-century after he starred as the best pitcher on the team and one of its greatest hitters. He spoke briefly to the thousands who gathered under bright sunshine about how much his time in Alaska meant to him and how he was thrilled to return here with his family.
Winfield wrote at length in his autobiography about Fairbanks and about how much he learned from the late Jim Dietz, who managed the team during those days. Winfield, who came to the Goldpanners at age 19, was among the players who worked on field maintenance as part of his summer duties.
Winfield either did or did not fall asleep on the tractor mower while grooming the friendly confines of Growden Memorial Park, only to be awakened by Dietz, who ran up to shut off the mower and keep Winfield from driving into the right-field wall.
“I saved your life,” Dietz said. “No, no, I wasn’t asleep,” Winfield said.
The legendary home run by Winfield either hit the roof of the Curling Club or bounced in front and hit the wall or rolled up to the wall.
When I went to work in 1976 at the Daily News-Miner, I covered the Midnight Sun Game that year. The Goldpanner faithful were still talking about Winfield and his mighty curling club shot.
The incident that inspired the legend may have taken place on June 27, 1972.
It was described in a prescient Daily News-Miner story headlined: “Is Winfield following ex-Panner Kingman?”
Dave Kingman, who hit 442 home runs in the Major Leagues, was a reformed pitcher.
The News-Miner said Winfield “put on a hitting exhibition which even Kingman would have been proud of, as he cracked a grand slam home run and a run-scoring single to power the Goldpanners to a 5-2 victory over the Grand Junction, Colo. Eagles in the second game of a doubleheader.”
In 12 official at-bats, Winfield was hitting .500 with three home runs. The preceding summer Winfield had been the top Panner pitcher, with nine wins.
“We’ve known all along what Winfield’s capable of doing with the bat,” said Dietz, “and that’s why we’ve tried to work him into the lineup occasionally. He’ll play more and more in the outfield as the season progresses, but whether he’ll ever become a full-time outfielder, it’s hard to say at this time.”
Winfield played 22 years in the majors, the fifth player in the history of baseball to get more than 3,000 hits and 450 home runs.
Winfield’s time in Fairbanks and his standout performance at the University of Minnesota should have shown the baseball world that it was possible to pitch, hit and play the field. But a half-century before Shohei Ohtani, the experts didn’t think it was possible.
When he began his pro career for the Padres in 1973, he told a San Diego reporter he felt comfortable on the mound and in the outfield.
“I really think I could do either. But they think of me as an outfielder, so that’s what I’ll be,” he said.
It’s no wonder, as sportswriter Lew Freedman put it in his history of Alaska baseball, that “any Goldpanner history talk quickly turns to Winfield. His name comes up in the first paragraph. Whether he ever hit a home run off the roof of the curling club or not.”
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Dave Winfield speaks about his time in Fairbanks during a ceremony marking the unveiling of the Winfield statue outside the Fairbanks Curling Club Friday. The statue will find a permanent home in the vicinity before long. (Photo by Karisse Ackerman)