Athletes - Dick Williams

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	Athletes - Dick Williams

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 adopted a hard-nosed, disciplinarian style and 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 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.

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.)

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