Richard Hirschfeld Williams (May 7, 1929 – July 7, 2011) was an American left fielder, third baseman, manager, coach and front-office consultant in Major League Baseball (MLB). Known especially as a hard-driving, sharp-tongued manager from 1967 to 1969 and from 1971 to 1988, he led teams to three American League pennants, one National League pennant, and two World Series triumphs. He is one of nine 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 (Bruce Bochy, in 2023, became the third). He and Lou Piniella are the only managers in history to lead four teams to seasons of 90 or more wins. Williams was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008 following his election by the Veterans Committee.
Early life Williams was born on May 7, 1929, in St. Louis, Missouri, and lived there until age 13, when his family moved to Pasadena, California. He attended Pasadena High School (which was then part of Pasadena Junior College, now Pasadena City College), where he was All-State in baseball and also played football and basketball (1946–47). In 2001, he was inducted into the Pasadena City College Hall of Fame.
Professional playing career
Minor leagues Just out of high school, Williams signed his first professional contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. From 1947 to 1956, he played all or parts of each season in the Dodgers minor league system. In 1948, playing Class C baseball, he had a .335 batting average with 16 home runs; however, Williams hit only .207 in Double-A baseball that year. A year later, again playing Double-A ball, he hit .310, with 23 home runs, 114 runs batted in (RBI) and 109 runs scored. In partial seasons playing Triple-A baseball he never hit more than .278. In 1955, his final full year in the minor leagues, he played Double-A ball for the Fort Worth Cats of the Texas League, hitting .317, with 24 home runs.
Williams played under manager Bobby Bragan at Fort Worth. Williams said, "'There should be a note under every one of my records that says See Bobby Bragan. Because a bit of every one of my wins belongs to him.'"
Major leagues From 1951 to 1954 and 1956, Williams was called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers. He never played in more than 36 games for the Dodgers during any of those seasons, and never had more than 71 plate appearances in a season.
Williams played his first major league game with Brooklyn in 1951. A right-handed batter and thrower, Williams was listed as tall and . Initially an outfielder, he separated a shoulder attempting to make a diving catch on August 25, 1952.Retrosheet box score: 1952-08-25 Williams missed the rest of the season and the injury permanently weakened his throwing arm. As a result, he 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. Over his five years in Brooklyn, Williams played in only 112 games with 224 at bats. The Dodgers waived him on June 25, 1956 and he was claimed by the Baltimore Orioles.
He was a favorite of Paul Richards, who acquired Williams four different times between 1956 and 1962 when Richards was a manager or general manager with Baltimore and the Houston Colt .45s. One such transaction occurred on April 12, 1961, when Williams was traded along with Dick Hall from the Athletics to the Orioles for Chuck Essegian and Jerry Walker."Orioles gain Hall, Williams," United Press International (UPI), Thursday, April 13, 1961. Retrieved February 28, 2023. He never played for Houston; he was acquired in an off-season "paper transaction" on October 12, 1962, then traded to the Boston Red Sox for another outfielder, Carroll Hardy, on December 10.
Williams played his most games for any one team in his five years as an Oriole (447), hitting 25 home runs and batting .255 in 1,417 at bats. Of greater significance may have been Richards's influence on Williams as a future manager. Like Bragan, with patience and down to the most minute detail, Richards would take days teaching all of his players the most fundamental aspects of the game, and how to handle each situation they might face on offense and defense.
Richards traded Williams to Cleveland during 1957 (where he played sparingly), but traded back for him at the beginning of 1958. Richards then traded him again after the 1958 season to the Kansas City Athletics for Chico Carrasquel. Williams played over 100 games each year in Kansas City (1959–60), and had his best all around hitting year in 1959, batting .266, with career highs of 16 home runs, 75 RBIs, 72 runs scored and 538 plate appearances, playing principally at third base (while also playing first base and the outfield). The following year, he hit .288 with 12 home runs and 65 RBIs. Richards traded for him again in April 1961, Richards last year with the Orioles. He again played over 100 games, but his average fell to .206.
In his final two years playing for the Red Sox, Williams only had a total 229 plate appearances. His two-year playing career in Boston was uneventful, except for one occasion. On June 27, 1963, Williams was victimized by one of the greatest catches in Fenway Park history. His long drive to the opposite field was snagged by Cleveland right fielder Al Luplow, who made a leaping catch at the wall and tumbled into the bullpen with the ball in his grasp.
Williams appeared in 1,023 games over 13 seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics, and Boston Red Sox. He posted a career batting average of .260; his 768 hits included 70 home runs, 157 doubles and 12 triples. In the field, he appeared in 456 games in the outfield, 257 at third base, and 188 at first.
Managing career
Boston Red Sox On October 14, 1964, after a season during which Williams hit a career-low .159, the Red Sox handed him his unconditional release. At 35, Williams was at a career crossroads: Richards gave him a spring training invitation but no guarantee that he would make the 1965 Astros' playing roster; the Red Sox offered Williams a job as playing coach with their Triple-A farm team, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League. Looking to begin a post-playing career in baseball, Williams accepted the Seattle assignment.
Within days, a shuffle in 1965 affiliations forced Boston to move its top minor league team to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League; as the Rainiers became the Seattle Angels (the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels). This caused the Red Sox' Triple-A manager, Seattle native Edo Vanni, to resign in order to remain in the Pacific Northwest. With a sudden opening for the Toronto job, Williams was promoted to manager of the 1965 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, making Williams feel he had a lot to prove. 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; and threatening to move unless a new stadium was built to replace Fenway Park. The Red Sox had talented young players, but the team was known as a lazy "country club." As Carl Yastrzemski commented, "if you don't keep your nose to the grindstone you won't (win) ... we kept our noses so far away from the grindstone we couldn't even see it."Sport magazine, November 1967
Williams decided to risk everything and impose discipline on his players. Before the season, Williams said "I honestly believe we'll win more games than we lose"—a bold statement for a club that had finished only a half-game from last place in 1966. The only team with a worse record than the Red Sox was their arch-rival, the New York Yankees, who were headed in a downward spiral only two years after losing the 1964 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.
In spring training, Williams instituted a dress code, vowed to relentlessly drill the players on the fundamentals, and he took the title of captain from team star Carl Yastrzemski. As then rookie Mike Andrews (who had played two years for Williams in Toronto) recalled, when Williams stripped Yastrzemski of this title, he said "'There's only one chief, and that's me. Everybody else is the Indians.'" Williams drilled players in fundamentals for hours. He issued fines for curfew violations, and insisted his players put the success of the team before their own. In Yastrzemski's words, "Dick Williams didn't take anything when he took over the club last spring ... to the best of my knowledge—and I would know if it had happened—no one challenged Williams all season."://Sport magazine, November 1967
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's 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 hitting style to become a pull-hitter, eventually winning the 1967 AL Triple Crown, leading the league in batting average, home runs (tying Harmon Killebrew of the Twins with 44), and RBIs.
In late July, the Red Sox rattled off a 10-game winning streak on the road and came home to a riotous welcome from 10,000 fans at Boston's Logan Airport. 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. (Pitcher Jack Hamilton denied intentionally throwing at Conigliaro, and he never hit another batter during his career.)
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, then they extended the highly talented and heavily favored St. Louis Cardinals to seven games in the 1967 World Series, losing 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 Conigliaro could not return from his head injury, and Williams's two top pitchers—Lonborg and José Santiago—suffered sore arms. He began to clash with Yastrzemski, and with owner Yawkey. With his club a distant third in the AL East, Williams was fired on September 23, 1969, and replaced by Eddie Popowski for the last nine games of the season.Eldridge, Larry. "Williams Fired By Red Sox," The Associated Press (AP), Wednesday September 24, 1969. Retrieved August 18, 2019
Oakland Athletics
After spending 1970 as the third base coach of the Montreal Expos, working under Gene Mauch, Williams returned to the managerial ranks the next year as boss of the Oakland Athletics, owned by Charlie Finley. Finley had signed players such as future Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter, future Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, future Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi, that were described by Finley as the "Swingin' A's".