Opinion: Dave Winfield remains enemy of Buckeye Nation, 50 years after infamous brawl
As villains go, Dave Winfield is the Darth Evader of Ohio State basketball history. For 50 years the former Minnesota Golden Gophers forward has downplayed his role in the 1972 brawl that sent three Buckeyes to the hospital.
Best known for a 23-season major league baseball career that landed him in the Hall of Fame, Winfield will never be celebrated by Ohio State fans of a certain age as anything but an escape artist who has never acknowledged, much less apologized for, his involvement in the violent chaos that broke out in Williams Arena on Jan. 25, 1972.
Count me among those who clench their teeth every time Winfield is mentioned as a stand-up guy whose baseball accomplishments and charitable organization prove he is not the same young athlete who unloaded a series of punches on Ohio State guard Mark Wagar, leaving the junior with cuts and a concussion.
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Dave Winfield was a central participant in the 1972 OSU-Minnesota brawl
My antipathy comes not so much from the way Winfield wielded his fists — a show of force that can be explained, if not excused, by a confluence of downward spiraling circumstances — but because the 70-year-old special assistant to the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association has never owned up to or been held accountable for his actions.
Winfield, who through an MLBPA spokesperson declined to be interviewed, was a central participant in the brawl, which began when Minnesota center Corky Taylor kneed OSU center Luke Witte in the groin with 36 seconds remaining in the Buckeyes’ win. A melee ensued that saw Witte stomped in the head by Ron Behagen and Wagar punched by the 6-foot-6 Winfield, Minnesota fans and team mascot Goldy Gopher. Ohio State forward Mark Minor also was hospitalized.
During a 2010 interview on the Big Ten Network, Winfield said, “I remember coming home after that game, my mother was sitting in the living room and watching TV, and she was kind of nervous. She was shaking and had a tear in her eye because it was so scary to her. I said, ‘Mom, I’m all right. I can handle myself.’ ”
Winfield offered no clear admission of involvement, continuing, “When you’re a kid, when you’re young, you don’t know the consequences, the enduring consequences of something like that.”
However for Winfield, the consequences have been negligible. Outside of Ohio State fans who still loathe him — and perhaps bird lovers who recall how Winfield killed a seagull by throwing a ball while warming up before the fifth inning of a 1983 game at Toronto — the former MLB outfielder/designated hitter is hailed as a 12-time All-Star with seven gold gloves and 3,110 hits.
Make that 3,115 hits if counting the five punches he landed on Wagar.
Winfield is fortunate that cell phones were not available in 1972 or evidence of his attack would not be so easily veiled. Still, witnesses confirm that Winfield was very much in the middle of the mayhem.
Sports Illustrated writer William F. Reed described the brawl from his courtside seat.
“Dave Winfield, who recently joined the Gopher varsity, joined the fray, too, dodging to mid-court where some Minnesota reserves and civilians were trying to wrestle Ohio State substitute Mark Wagar to the floor. Winfield leaped on top of Wagar when he was down and hit him five times with his right fist on the face and head.”
Ohio State athletic department officials studied two different TV tapes of the game, which according to a Columbus Dispatch story two days after the brawl, showed “one shocking sequence in which Minnesota player Dave Winfield is pounding Wagar’s head into the floor while the Buckeye is being held down by another Minnesota player and two spectators.”
Or simply take it from Wagar: “My concussion was from a number of strikes to the head I took, most from Dave Winfield. … The back of my head must have been threatening.”
It remains gnawing not only that Winfield escaped punishment — some speculate the brawl had spread so much across the floor it was impossible to be certain who started what fight — but that he apparently had a hand in declaring himself innocent. While Taylor and Behagen were suspended for the season, Winfield received no such penalty. A 17-member panel of Minnesota athletic officials and students did not include Winfield among the players deserving harsh discipline.
One of the student voters? Winfield.
Racial tensions and the players' youth led to the calamity in the brawl
Not all feel this way, but I want to forgive Winfield for the brawl-turned-riot. He was a 20-year-old athlete coached by Bill Musselman, whose win-at-all-cost mantra fueled the Williams crowd into a frenzy even before the fighting began. (The game was momentarily delayed with 14:30 left when fans began tossing coins, ice and paper onto the court).
Combining immaturity of youth with a flame-thrower of a coach, then adding racial tensions that seemed ever-present in the early 1970s, created a volatile cocktail of pending calamity. Minnesota’s roster was mostly black; Ohio State’s mostly white. Buckeyes guard Bennie Allison, who is Black, said at the time the brawl was racially motivated, that Minnesota’s Black players “just passed us up and went for the other guys.”
All that factors into the narrative, but none of it precludes Winfield from taking responsibility for his actions, which is why granting him the benefit of the doubt doesn’t work with me.
With Ohio State playing at Minnesota Thursday, now would be a good time for the Hall of Famer to come clean.