Dick Williams
From SoSH
| Born: | Tuesday May 07 1929 |
| Birthplace: | St. Louis MO USA |
| Hometown: | |
| Height: | 6 ' 0 |
| Weight: | 190 |
| Bats: | Right |
| Throws: | Right |
| Drafted: | |
| College: | |
| High School: | |
| Other Teams: | |
| Years with Boston: |
Contents |
Overall Career
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 seven 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
"Impossible Dream" in Boston
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, the Seattle manager, Edo Vanni, preferred to remain in his native Pacific Northwest. With the opening, Williams was promoted to manager of the 1965 baseball Maple Leafs. As a novice pilot, Williams adopted a hard-nosed, disciplinarian style and won two consecutive Governors' 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 highly talented and heavily favored 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.
Two Titles in a Row
After spending 1970 as the third-base coach of the Montreal Expos, Williams returned to the managerial ranks the next year 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 5½ 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).
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.)
Managerial Record
Year League Team Age G W L WP Finish
1967 American Lg BostonRS 38 162 92 70 .568 AL 1
1968 American Lg BostonRS 39 162 86 76 .531 4
1969 AL East BostonRS 40 153 82 71 .536 3
1971 AL West Oakland 42 161 101 60 .627 1
1972 AL West Oakland 43 155 93 62 .600 WS 1
1973 AL West Oakland 44 162 94 68 .580 WS 1
1974 AL West Califrna 45 84 36 48 .429 6
1975 AL West Califrna 46 161 72 89 .447 6
1976 AL West Califrna 47 96 39 57 .406 4
1977 NL East Montreal 48 162 75 87 .463 5
1978 NL East Montreal 49 162 76 86 .469 4
1979 NL East Montreal 50 160 95 65 .594 2
1980 NL East Montreal 51 162 90 72 .556 2
1981 NL East Montreal 52 55 30 25 .545 3 First half of season
1981 NL East Montreal 52 26 14 12 .538 1 Second half of season
1982 NL West SanDiego 53 162 81 81 .500 4
1983 NL West SanDiego 54 163 81 81 .500 4
1984 NL West SanDiego 55 162 92 70 .568 NL 1
1985 NL West SanDiego 56 162 83 79 .512 3
1986 AL West Seattle 57 133 58 75 .436 7
1987 AL West Seattle 58 162 78 84 .481 4
1988 AL West Seattle 59 56 23 33 .411 7
Califrna 341 147 194 .431
BostonRS 477 260 217 .545
Oakland 478 288 190 .603
SanDiego 649 337 311 .520
Seattle 351 159 192 .453
Montreal 727 380 347 .523
TOTAL 3023 1571 1451 .520
Final Season
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.
In 1989, Williams was named manager of the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, a league featuring mostly former major league players 35 years of age and older. The Tropics went 52-20 in the regular season and ran away with the Southern Division title. Despite their regular season dominance, the Tropics lost 12-4 to the St. Petersburg Pelicans in the league's championship game. The Tropics folded at the end of the season, and the rest of the league folded a year later.
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. His acrimonious departure in 1969 distanced Williams from the Red Sox for the remainder of the Yawkey period (through 2001), but after the change in ownership and management that followed, he was selected to the team's Hall of Fame in 2006.
Awards
- Elected to Hall of Fame by Veterans Committee in 2008, Manager
Transactions
- Before 1947 Season: Signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent.
- June 25, 1956: Selected off waivers by the Baltimore Orioles from the Brooklyn Dodgers.
- June 13, 1957: Traded by the Baltimore Orioles to the Cleveland Indians for Jim Busby.
- April 1, 1958: Traded by the Cleveland Indians with Bud Daley and Gene Woodling to the Baltimore Orioles for Larry Doby and Don Ferrarese.
- October 2, 1958: Traded by the Baltimore Orioles to the Kansas City Athletics for Chico Carrasquel.
- April 12, 1961: Traded by the Kansas City Athletics with Dick Hall to the Baltimore Orioles for Chuck Essegian and Jerry Walker.
- October 12, 1962: Purchased by the Houston Colt .45's from the Baltimore Orioles.
- December 10, 1962: Traded by the Houston Colt .45's to the Boston Red Sox for Carroll Hardy.
- October 14, 1964: Released by the Boston Red Sox.
External Links
- Baseball-Reference.com - Career Statistics and Analysis
- 2008 Hall of Fame Class
