Years with A's gets Williams Hall pass

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Dec 6, 2007 | by Gary Peterson

THE SCOUTING report on Dick Williams hasn't changed much since he got his first major league managing job 41 years ago: Perceptive. Decisive. No nonsense.

You never had to wonder what he was thinking. You still don't.

Williams was elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame by

the Veterans Committee on Monday. The first order of business for a man accorded that honor, even before learning the secret handshake, is choosing the cap that will be depicted on his bronze plaque.

"They asked my opinion," Williams said Tuesday at a press conference in Nashville. "I said the Oakland A's, and that was their thought."

A tough choice on the face of it, given that Williams wore 10 different lids during his 34 seasons as a major league player and manager. But on a practical level, it was no choice at all. Without the three years he spent in Oakland, Williams never would have risen above the respected, but well-populated station of Career Baseball Man.

His playing career was a prelude -- 13 seasons, 11 after breaking his collarbone while with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Longtime Bay Area sportswriter Ron Bergman, who covered the A's for the Oakland Tribune, picks up the story in his wonderful book, "Mustache Gang."

"Afterward," Williams said, "I couldn't throw a ball across a room. I was a kid with a bum arm, lots of hustle and strong vocal cords. Maybe it was for the best."

After retiring in 1964, Williams managed two seasons for Boston's Triple-A team. That earned him a promotion to the big club, which had gone eight years without a winning record, and 20 years without appearing in the World Series. His first order of business was to strip popular left fielder Carl Yastrzemski of his team captaincy.

"I'm the only chief around here," said Williams, then 38. "The players are the Indians."

The rookie manager guided the Red Sox through a pulsating four- team race, winning the American League pennant on the season's final day. Boston lost the World Series in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals, but Williams was on the map as a certified miracle worker.

The Sox being the Sox, he was let go two years later. After one season coaching for Montreal under manager Gene Mauch, Williams was hired for the 1971 season by A's owner Charlie Finley.

"Gene said, 'Are you sure you want to go with Charlie?'" Williams said Tuesday. "That was a great experience, and I learned a lot from Charlie. Most of it on the positive side."

Finley, for the uninitiated, was a cross between George Steinbrenner and P.T. Barnum, a bombastic eccentric blessed with some of the best talent the Me Generation had to offer. Williams' job was to help it break through. He came to Oakland claiming to have mellowed. The A's quickly found out otherwise.

In the book, Bergman describes an early-season flight during which the players availed themselves of copious adult beverages, and a bullhorn turned up missing from the plane's emergency supply closet.

Williams addressed the team.

"Gentlemen, some of you think you can be (jerks)," he said. "But I've got news for you; I can be the biggest (jerk) of all."

The bullhorn was quickly returned. Alcohol was banned on future flights. And the A's began to win.

They won the division in'71, then were swept in the playoffs by Baltimore. The'72 season was delayed by a strike and enlivened by Finley's impulsive meddling. Williams got the players to unite, if only in their hatred of Finley.

They won the division. They beat Detroit in the League Championship Series despite losing shortstop Campy Campaneris to a league suspension. Then, despite having lost Reggie Jackson to injury in the final game against Detroit, they beat Cincinnati in a seven-game World Series. Six games were decided by one run.

In 1973, the A's repeated as World Series champs. By then Williams had become a respected figure in the locker room. But he'd also grown weary of acting as a buffer between Finley and the players. He left the A's after the'73 season.

He managed 15 more seasons, for a total of 21 in the bigs. He retired as the 13th-winningest manager in baseball history. But his three years in Oakland dwarf his achievements elsewhere -- a winning percentage of .603 (.504 elsewhere), and two World Series championships (two failed World Series appearances elsewhere).

Four of the six teams he inherited won appreciably more after he got there. This became his calling card. But nowhere did he win as much, as quickly and as loudly as he did here.

That time allowed him to write his own ticket, one that has finally delivered him to Cooperstown. And about that secret handshake -- you can leave your hat on.

Contact Gary Peterson at

gpeterson@bayareanewsgroup.com.