Dick Williams
Major League Baseball players had a unique opportunity for decades and that was membership during the season in an exclusive country club. This club’s approach was unique in that it paid its members and not much was expected in return except to possibly play catch and drink with the owner. Entrance to the club was by initiation meaning either being traded or signed by the Boston Red Sox. Unfortunately, the reality is this is not much of an exaggeration of the Red Sox for far too many years.
This changed dramatically in 1967 when Dick Williams was hired to manage the Red Sox. As a player, Williams drifted through both the American and National Leagues hitting a career .260 as a role player. Williams’s last two seasons as a player were with the Red Sox (1963-64) and he left an impression on the organization as possible managerial material.
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Williams managerial style was honed in the minors and brought to Boston – hard-nosed, aggressive, merciless disciplinarian – an attitude that stated boldly “we will win more games than we lose” when he arrived on the Fenway Park doorstep. Excessive hubris for the titular head of a team that finished ninth the previous year.
Williams was a talent blind administrator who placed no value or special considerations to the star system. There was to be no special treatment and Carl Yastrzemski knew that rather well and had spent the offseason getting into training that would pay dividends as the best year I have ever seen a player have. What Williams had to work with and develop as a team heavy on youth with an average age of 25.3 years. And work he most certainly did.
Williams’s started the new attitude right at the starting gate in spring training. Unmarried players stayed at the team hotel, fines were levied for various infractions, fundamentals were taught and re-taught and no one became immune to the caustic Williams, especially hulking first baseman George Scott. The result was an ever-expanding membership in the Williams doghouse, but an equally expanding number of wins from a team that was picked to lose possibly 100 games.
The Williams method was working and the results were clear with a seven-game World Series loss to the Cardinals. For one glorious season, the Williams method worked. Then it went south.
In 1968, injuries hit the pitching staff and slugging outfielder Tony Conigliaro who was out of action all season. Frustrations grew and so did internal conflicts with players, especially Yastrzemski. As a comparison, this was similar to the recent Bobby Valentine’s failure in Boston.
The overriding issue was Williams’s relationship with owner Tom Yawkey who Williams viewed as meddlesome and too protective. In battles like this, the owner always wins and Williams was fired near the end of the 1969 season. Subsequent history has also noted that Williams was particularly harsh on players of color – a topic mentioned by both Scott and especially Reggie Smith.
When Williams departed Boston he was not done as a manager winning two titles with the Athletics and a pennant with the Padres. Williams managed a total of 21 seasons and as he had stated in Boston he won more than he lost (1571-1451) on his way to the Baseball Hall of Fame.