Dick Williams

by David Fleitz

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Here is Dick Williams' Topps card from 1957. He was a utility player and pinch-hitter for the Dodgers, Orioles, A's, and Red Sox from 1951 to 1964.

I was a little surprised by the recent Veterans Committee balloting for the Hall of Fame.

I fully expected the committee to choose former manager Dick Williams, who won four pennants and two consecutive World Series with the Oakland A's in 1972-73. The committee has picked several other managers with similar credentials in the last few years, and I thought Williams would be next.

However, the committee chose Bill Mazeroski and Negro Leagues star Hilton Smith, and didn't pick an executive, a 19th century player, or a manager this time around.

Why didn't they pick Williams? There may be several reasons. He was arrested for "indecent exposure" a few years ago; I don't know if it was just a misunderstanding or what, but it certainly was an embarrassment. Perhaps the committee wants another year or two to go by before they present him with such a high honor.

Also, Williams was not the most friendly guy in the game, especially as he got older. I remember Bill James writing in the late 1980s that Dick Williams' "normal procedure of alienating half the (Seattle) team" had already begun not long after Williams took over the club. He was fired in Boston in 1969 when his players rebelled against him, and the Expos fired him in mid-1981 in the middle of a pennant race. He quit the A's after the 1973 World Series, after he'd had enough of owner Charlie Finley's dictatorial treatment of his players. In short, Williams was a gruff man who made enemies more easily than friends.

So, does he belong in the Hall of Fame?

To answer this question, I put together a table of managerial records. This table contains all the 20th-century managers who were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1990s, put in order of their winning percentage. I also included a few other managers, some of whom are in the Hall and some who are not.

                                                   World           Hall of
Manager            Wins   Losses   Pct.  Pennants  Series   Years   Fame?
Billy Southworth  1,044     704    .597      4        2    1929-51   No
Al Lopez          1,410   1,004    .584      2        0    1951-69   Yes
Earl Weaver       1,480   1,060    .583      4        1    1968-86   Yes
Billy Martin      1,253   1,013    .553      2        1    1969-88   No
Charlie Grimm     1,287   1,067    .547      3        0    1932-60   No
Sparky Anderson   2,194   1,834    .545      5        3    1970-95   Yes
Leo Durocher      2,008   1,709    .540      3        1    1939-73   Yes
Tommy Lasorda     1,599   1,439    .526      4        2    1976-96   Yes
Bill McKechnie    1,896   1,723    .524      4        2    1915-46   Yes
Dick Williams     1,571   1,451    .520      4        2    1967-88   No
Ralph Houk        1,619   1,531    .514      3        2    1961-84   No

Dick Williams was one of the many players who came through the Brooklyn-Los Angeles Dodger system from the 1940s to the present who have had successful managerial careers. Other Dodger players-turned-managers include Tommy Lasorda, Gil Hodges, Sparky Anderson, Gene Mauch, Don Zimmer, and current Mets skipper Bobby Valentine. The Dodgers had an excellent farm system, and they had a way of identifying and training leaders. Williams studied under managers like Chuck Dressen, Walter Alston, and Paul Richards in his many stops as a player.

Williams learned his craft well, and in his first season as a manager he took a ninth-place Red Sox team and led it to a pennant in 1967. He held the fighting A's together long enough to win three division titles in 1971-73, winning the Series in the last two years, and he took a mediocre San Diego team to its first pennant in 1984. He's one of the few managers to win pennants in both leagues, and he's 16th on the all-time list of games won.

Dick Williams shows up at the next-to-last position in the table above, but one can still make a case for his election to the Hall. There are three managers with nearly identical records - Lasorda, McKechnie, and Williams. Each man won four pennants and two World Series titles, and won between 52 and 53 percent of their games. If Lasorda is in, and McKechnie is in, it looks like Dick Williams should be there as well.

However, I'd put the guy on the top of the list in the Hall of Fame before Williams. Watch this space in the next few weeks for an article about Billy Southworth.