Ex-manager Williams headed to Hall

WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. -- One of the first calls to the Dick Williams household outside Las Vegas the day he was elected to the Hall of Fame came from one of his former pitchers, Rich "Goose" Gossage. Norma Williams, Dick's wife, answered. "I said this is the guy who should have walked Kirk Gibson," Gossage said. ''And she just cracked up."

The Williamses and Gossage can laugh now, but it was not so funny in 1984 when their San Diego club was facing Detroit in Game 5 of the World Series.

The Padres trailed 5-4 in the eighth inning when Williams, the manager, instructed his closer to walk Gibson. Gossage refused, the volatile Williams shot out of the dugout and the two had a discussion on the mound.

Williams relented. Two pitches, later Gibson hit a three-run homer into the upper deck that clinched the series for the Tigers.

On Sunday, the two will stand together again, this time on a podium in Cooperstown. Williams, 79, was elected on the Veterans Committee ballot in December, almost 20 years after he last managed in the majors.

"I could never understand why Dick wasn't put into the Hall of Fame earlier," said Gossage, the only player who will be inducted this year. "He didn't have to take a back seat to anyone."

Williams is one of two managers to reach the World Series with three teams -- the 1967 Boston Red Sox, the 1972-73 Oakland A's and the '84 Padres. Williams has title rings from the Oakland teams and will wear an A's cap on his plaque.

After a 21-year career as a major league manager with six teams, Williams' final season in a dugout was at old Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach. He was hired by owners John Henry (now the Red Sox owner) and Don Sider to run the local entry in the Senior Professional Baseball Association, a 35-and-over league stocked mostly with former major leaguers.

The West Palm Beach job let Williams return to the Singer Island, Fla., home he had built in 1968, the year after he was recognized as Manager of the Year for taking a moribund Red Sox franchise to the World Series.

One of the Williamses' three children, Ricky, went on to become a major league scout who now works for Boston's No. 1 rival, the Yankees. He started traveling with his dad at age 8, and saw firsthand the qualities that made Dick Williams one of baseball's most successful managers -- and one of its toughest.

"I saw some really good things, and I saw things that would really scare you as far as confrontations with players," said Ricky. "I understood what his role was. He was a disciplinarian. Most of them listened to him and some didn't or it became a confrontation."

Hall of Fame pitcher Rollie Fingers played for Williams in Oakland and West Palm Beach. Fingers said Williams' approach helped make the pitcher a Hall of Famer.

"If he didn't like something I did he'd jump my hind side," Fingers said. "It was more the mental errors than the physical errors. If he gets on you in front of your teammates then you remember."

Dick Williams concedes he was demanding, and that his old-school style wouldn't work today.

"I'd get fired within a week," he said. "My style of play doesn't fit in with all these millionaires now. More power to the player; he's getting all that money. They're bigger. They're stronger.

"But I don't think they know baseball as well as we knew it or still know it."

It was in Oakland where Williams became a household name. There, he led to the top of the baseball world a famously mustachioed group of stars that included Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris and Joe Rudi.

The A's had plenty of big personalities, but the biggest might have been often-tyrannical owner Charles O. Finley.

The players "all hated Finley so they loved me," Williams said. "And it made my job a lot easier."