"You can have my girl, but don't touch my hat."
-- Lyle Lovett

He once went right from the University of Minnesota to the outfield of the San Diego Padres. Now Dave Winfield has a chance to make history again.

He could be the first Hall of Famer to wear a hat on his plaque that reads: "SPACE AVAILABLE."

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Has anyone ever gone into the Hall of Fame wearing the cap of a team whose owner was suspended from baseball for hiring a guy to destroy that particular player's reputation? ”

When the Hall of Fame voting was announced Tuesday, Winfield had no shortage of votes -- 435 of them, as a matter of fact. But he did have a pronounced shortage of answers to a question he was probably asked more Tuesday than on any day since his senior prom:

"What are you wearing?"

Tough question.

He was a Padre. He was a Yankee. He was a Blue Jay. He was a Twin. He was an Angel. He was an Indian.

So once, Dave Winfield was a man of many hats. But now, as the plaque-makers in Cooperstown prepare to grab their chisels, he's a man of no hat.

He wasn't even a man with any decent answers about the hat he'll eventually have to wear forever to all affairs -- formal and informal -- in the Hall of Fame gallery. Which didn't stop people from asking that same trick question pretty much all day long.

Looking for the most revealing response? You can now pick your favorite from his smorgasbord of non-answers:

1) "I really haven't thought about it."
2) "It will be kind of a personal decision, and I really couldn't tell you what would go into it right now."
3) "I understand the Yankees have had more than a score of people go in (to the Hall), and the Padres haven't had anyone. But that really isn't going to come into play when I have to make a decision.
And, finally, in case all of that wasn't evasive enough, 4) "Again, I really don't know."

So anything is possible. Maybe he'll decide to go into the Hall wearing a ski cap, or a fedora, or an old 1950s Stetson.

He could wear a Nike cap or a Joe's Tavern cap or, if he wants to get Bud Selig to show up at his induction, possibly a salary cap.

There's even precedent for a generic cap. There are in fact, 34 people in the Hall (mostly executives) wearing no cap and 70 more wearing caps with no logo whatsoever. So if Boss Steinbrenner isn't really, really nice to him in the next couple of months, he can always threaten to go that route.

But if you'd like to bet on Winfield wearing a cap he actually wore when he played, we're right with you. And to help you narrow down the possibilities, here's how we would handicap the field.

Indians: 252 million to 1
Of those 3,110 hits Winfield got, exactly 22 of them were for the Indians in '95. That ties him with Junior Noboa on the all-time Indians hit list, by the way.

And that's fitting. Winfield also has as much chance of wearing that cap on his plaque as Junior does.

Angels: 1,000 to 1
The Anaheim portion of Winfield's career isn't reminisced about much -- except, occasionally, by Bill Pecota, a Royals infielder who once enabled Winfield to hit for the cycle by giving up a triple to him while pitching one day in June 1991.

Nevertheless, Winfield does still make his home in Southern California. And it was the Angels who allowed Winfield to revive his career after his back surgery by trading for him in May of 1990, springing him from further purgatory in The Bronx.

"The California Angels wanted me to play," he said Tuesday. "They gave me the opportunity, and I just reemerged."

Under other circumstances, we might have described that remark as a tip of the cap to the Angels. But in this case, it was a tip of the capless.

Blue Jays: 913.55 to 1 (Canadian)
Toronto, of course, was where Winfield won his only World Series, in 1992. It was in that memorable October that the Jays beat the Braves -- or, as Winfield nostalgically referred to them Tuesday, "that team."

Winfield did hit 26 homers and drive in 108 runs for those Blue Jays, in a season in which he turned 41 in October. More importantly, they gave people the opportunity to forget that in his only previous World Series, in 1981 with the Yankees, when he went 1-for-22.

So if talks break down with some of the more likely cap bearers, the proper proclamation by the Canadian parliament could still propel the Blue Jays back into the plaque derby.

Twins: 100 to 1
It was in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area where the young Dave Winfield grew up, idolizing the likes of Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva and Zoilo Versalles.

It was also in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area, in 1993, that a 41-year-old Dave Winfield collected his 3,000th hit, wearing the uniform of his beloved Twins.

So naturally, he spoke glowingly Tuesday of the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area and just about everyone and everything in it -- until a local reporter asked if that meant he had not ruled out wearing a Twins cap on his plaque.

"Well," he hedged spectacularly, "I was really only there for one (full) year. It was really just a cup of coffee."

Then, however, he remembered he was trying not to throw anybody's hat in or out of the ring quite yet.

So he added, strategically: "But I'm not going to start ruling out people right now, because each team I played for contributed something to my career."

Loose translation: Retire my number, give me a high-paying ceremonial position and we'll talk.

Padres: 5 to 1
Without the Padres making him the fourth pick in the entire 1973 draft, there would be no Dave Winfield Hall of Fame cap drama going on these days.

Without the Padres having the courage to beam him right from the campus to the big leagues, there would be no Dave Winfield Hall of Fame cap drama going on these days.

And without the Padres being such a laughing stock for eight years that Winfield was forced to bolt for New York as soon as he became a free agent, there also would be no Dave Winfield Hall of Fame cap drama going on these days.

It's clear Winfield has some fond memories of his days in San Diego. But he seemed to have a hard time recalling them during his conference call Tuesday.

Asked about those early years in San Diego and what they contributed to his career, he gave the following cryptic answer:

"Early in my career, I dedicated myself to being the best player I could be, under whatever circumstances. Whatever team I played for, I tried not to complain about whether we won or lost all the time."

If that didn't sound like a glowing endorsement of the Ray Kroc/Dave Freisleben/Juan Tyrone Eichelberger years, you seem to have read it right. Winfield did express thanks to the Padres for the "appreciation" they've shown for him since his playing days ended. But we need to remember that if Winfield is indeed going to become the first man ever to wear a Padres cap into Cooperstown, it's going to be a replica of one of the most unsightly caps (and uniforms) ever worn on a major-league field: straight out of Kroc's old brown-and-gold McDonald's catalogue.

Can the powers that be really allow that cap to be commemorated in Cooperstown? Uh, better consider the alternative. Which is ...

Yankees: 3 to 1
It may have been those years in New York that put Winfield on the baseball map.

It may have been those years in New York where he rose to massive national prominence.

It may have been those years in New York where he won five Gold Gloves, finished in the top 10 in the MVP voting four times and played in eight straight All-Star Games.

But all of that could be counteracted by this momentous question:

Has anyone ever gone into the Hall of Fame wearing the cap of a team whose owner was suspended from baseball for hiring a guy to destroy that particular player's reputation?

Hmm. No wonder this guy was playing dodge ball during all those "hat" questions.

"It's well-documented," Winfield tap-danced Tuesday, "that during a very important, highly visible time in my career, there was a lot of acrimony going back and forth. Things were said that were not meant, things that were later apologized for. I've accepted that (apology).

"It was truly difficult," he went on. "And a lot of players probably wouldn't have made it through that. But I loved the people and the city of New York, and I wasn't going anywhere."

Ordinarily, in a situation like this, that love for the city of New York wouldn't be enough to convince a man to overlook the fact that his owner once called him "Mr. May." (And that was one of the nicer things Boss Steinbrenner used to call him.)

But the Boss, see, is a very bright man. So in recent months, he has been trying to warm up to Winfield, letting him throw out the first pitch of a postseason game, even hinting about having a Dave Winfield Day at The Stadium.

Think that will work?

Winfield said Tuesday that he and Steinbrenner had "overcome many of those things" from the past. But Winfield also sounded wounded by the fact that Steinbrenner's smears "seemed to carry a life of their own" -- and that they "really don't reflect the kind of player I was or the kind of person I was."

Then, in just about the next breath, he called those days in New York "the best times of my life." (Not counting the insults and lawsuits, of course.)

So ...

Trying to comb through all of that to derive a hint on which way Winfield is leaning? Good luck.

"Whether any of that will come into play when I choose a hat, I don't know," he said. "There are probably a lot of things I'll consider. But I won't go over them in my mind right now."

And he shouldn't. In fact, we'd suggest that Winfield sit back and have a hot cap-pucino, maybe take a long walk through the Cap-itol building and then, if that doesn't help, take a vacation to Hat-tiesburg, Miss. And we bet this choice will come to him, possibly via some sort of cap-sule from out of space.

And until then? We'll all just have to be, uh, cap-tivated.

Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com.