Profile of Dick Anthony Williams on Famous Like Me

Richard Hirschfeld Williams (born May 7, 1929 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a former player, manager, coach and front office consultant in Major League Baseball. Known especially as a hard-driving, sharp-tongued manager from 1967-69 and 1971-88, he led teams to three American League pennants, one National League title, and two World Series triumphs. He is one of six managers to win pennants in both major leagues, and joined Bill McKechnie in becoming only the second manager to lead three franchises to the Series.

After growing up in Pasadena, California, Williams signed his first professional contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, and played his first major league game with Brooklyn in 1951. Initially an outfielder, he injured a shoulder making a diving catch early in his career, and as a result learned to play several positions (he was frequently a first baseman and third baseman) and became a notorious "bench jockey" in order to keep his major league job. He appeared in 1,023 games over 13 seasons with the Dodgers, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics and Boston Red Sox. A right-handed batter (and thrower), he had a career batting average of .260 with 70 home runs.

In October 1964, the Red Sox cut Williams from their roster and named him a player-coach with their AAA farm team, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League. But when a shuffle in affiliations forced Boston to move its top minor league team to Toronto of the International League, Williams was promoted to manager of the baseball Maple Leafs for 1965. As a novice pilot, Williams won two consecutive Governor's Cup championships with teams laden with young Red Sox prospects. He then signed a one-year contract to manage the 1967 Red Sox.

Boston had suffered through eight straight seasons of losing baseball, and attendance had fallen to such an extent that owner Tom Yawkey was threatening to move the team. The Red Sox had talented young players, but the team was known as a lazy "country club." Williams decided to risk everything and impose discipline on his players. He vowed that "we will win more ballgames than we lose" - a bold statement for a club that had finished only a half-game from last place in 1966. In spring training he drilled players in fundamentals for hours.

The Red Sox began 1967 playing better baseball and employing the aggressive style of play that Williams had learned with the Dodgers. Williams benched players for lack of effort and poor performance, and battled tooth and nail with umpires. Through the All-Star break, Boston fulfilled Williams' promise and played better than .500 ball, hanging close to the American League's four contending teams - the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, Chicago White Sox, and California Angels. Outfielder Carl Yastrzemski, in his seventh season with the Red Sox, transformed his game, eventually winning the 1967 AL "Triple Crown" - leading the league in batting average, home runs (tying Harmon Killebrew of the Twins), and RBI.

In late July, the Red Sox rattled off a ten-game winning streak on the road. The team came home to a riotous welcome from 10,000 fans at Boston's Logan Airport - an event that marks the birth of Red Sox Nation. The Red Sox inserted themselves into a five-team pennant race, and stayed in the hunt despite the loss of star outfielder Tony Conigliaro to a beanball on August 18. On the closing weekend of the season, led by Yastrzemski and 22-game-winning pitcher Jim Lonborg, Boston defeated the Twins in two head-to-head games, while Detroit split its series with the Angels. The "Impossible Dream" Red Sox had won their first AL pennant since 1946. The Red Sox extended the much more powerful St. Louis Cardinals to seven games in the 1967 World Series - losing the to the great Bob Gibson three times.

Despite the Series loss, the Red Sox were the toasts of New England; Williams was named Major League Manager of the Year by The Sporting News and signed to a new three-year contract. But he would not serve it out; in 1968 the team fell to fourth place when Williams' two top pitchers - Lonborg and Jose Santiago - were injured. He began to clash with Yastrzemski, and with owner Yawkey. In September 1969, with the Red Sox a distant third in the AL East, Williams was fired.

After spending 1970 as the third-base coach of the Montreal Expos, Williams returned to the managerial ranks as boss of the Oakland Athletics, owned by Charlie Finley. The iconoclastic Finley had signed some of the finest talent in baseball - including Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi - but his players hated him for his penny-pinching and constant meddling in the team's affairs. (Finley changed managers ten times in his first decade, 1961-70, as team owner.)

Inheriting a second-place team from predecessor John McNamara, Williams promptly directed the A's to their first AL West title in 1971 (behind another brilliant young player, pitcher Vida Blue). Despite being humbled in the ALCS by the defending world champion Orioles, Finley brought Williams back for 1972, when the "Oakland Dynasty" would begin. Off the field, the A's players brawled with each other and defied baseball's tonsorial code. Because long hair, mustaches and beards were now the rage in the "civilian" world, Finley decided on a mid-season promotion encouraging his men to wear their hair long and grow facial hair. Fingers adopted his trademark handlebar mustache; Williams himself grew a mustache.

Of course, talent - not hairstyle - truly defined the Oakland Dynasty of the early 1970s. The 1972 A's won their division by 5 1/2 games and led the league in home runs, shutouts and saves. They defeated the Tigers in a bitterly fought ALCS, and found themselves facing "the Big Red Machine" in the World Series. The Cincinnati Reds were favored to win, but the home run heroics of Oakland catcher Gene Tenace and the managerial maneuvering of Williams resulted in a seven-game World Series title for the A's (and the franchise's first World Series championship since 1930, when the club played in [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania|Philadelphia).

In 1973, with Williams back for an unprecedented (for Finley) third straight campaign, the A's again coasted to their division title, then defeated Baltimore in the ALCS and the NL champ New York Mets in the World Series - each hard-fought series going the limit. Oakland won its second straight world title, the first repeat champions since the New York Yankees of 1961-62. But Williams had a surprise for Finley. Tired of his owner's meddling, and upset by Finley's public humiliation of second baseman Mike Andrews for his fielding miscues during the '73 World Series, Williams resigned. George Steinbrenner, in his first season as owner of the Yankees, immediately signed Williams as his manager. But Finley protested that, because his contract with Williams had another year to run, Williams would manage in Oakland and nowhere else. (Steinbrenner then hired Bill Virdon.)

Seemingly at the peak of his career, Dick Williams began the 1974 season out of work. But when the California Angels struggled under manager Bobby Winkles, team owner Gene Autry got Finley's permission to negotiate with Williams and in mid-season Williams was back in a big league dugout. The change in management did not alter the fortunes of the Angels, who finished last, 22 games behind Finley's A's - now managed by Alvin Dark and en route to their third straight world championship. And overall, Williams' Anaheim tenure turned out to be a miserable one. The Angels finished last in the AL West again in 1975, and were 18 games below .500 (and in the midst of a player revolt) when Williams was fired in July 1976.

But when Williams switched to the National League, he regained his winning touch. In 1977, he returned to Montreal as manager of the Expos, coming off 100 losses and a last-place finish in the NL East. After cajoling them into improved, but below .500, performances in his first two seasons in Montreal, Williams turned the 1979-80 Expos into pennant contenders, winning over 90 games both years, although finishing second each season. The Expos, with a fruitful farm system and young All-Stars such as Andre Dawson and Gary Carter, seemed a lock to contend for a long time. But Williams' hard edge alienated his players and ultimately wore out his welcome. When the 1981 team performed below expectations, Williams was fired during the pennant drive. Inspired by easy-going new skipper Jim Fanning, the Expos made the playoffs for the only time in their 36-year history in Montreal.

In 1982, Williams took over another chronic loser, the San Diego Padres. By 1984, he had guided the Padres to their first NL West Division championship. In the NLCS, the East champion Chicago Cubs – making their first postseason appearance since 1945 – won Games 1 and 2, but Williams' Padres took the next three games, a miraculous comeback, to win the pennant. In the World Series, San Diego was no match for Sparky Anderson's Detroit Tigers, who went 104-58 in the regular season (after steamrolling to a 35-5 mark by late May). The Tigers won the World Series in five games. But Williams – and Anderson – joined Dark, Joe McCarthy and Yogi Berra as managers who had won pennants in each major league (Tony LaRussa joined this group in 2004). The Padres fell to third in 1985, and Williams was let go as manager just before 1986 spring training. It appeared that his career had ended.

But then another perennial loser called on Williams: the Seattle Mariners. When the 1986 M's lost 19 of their first 28 games under Chuck Cottier, Williams came back to the American League West for the first time in almost a decade. The Mariners showed some life that season and almost reached .500 in 1987, but it soon became apparent that Williams' sarcasm and refusal to tolerate mental mistakes would no longer play with a new generation of ballplayers. He was fired from his last managing job with Seattle 23-33 and in sixth place in June 1988. Coming full circle, his managing career ended in the same city where his coaching career would have begun. Williams' career won-loss totals were 1,571 wins, 1,451 losses over 21 seasons.

He remained in the game, however, as a special consultant to Steinbrenner and the Yankees. In 1990, Williams published his autobiography, No More Mister Nice Guy.

External link

• Baseball-Reference.com - career managing record and playing statistics

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