Nobody in a dugout was tougher than Dick Williams

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, 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."

They 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 met his pitcher on the mound.

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

On Sunday, the two will stand together again, on a podium in Cooperstown, N.Y. 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, including the Mariners, 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 league started late in 1989 and was disbanded midway through its second season. The West Palm Beach Tropics, managed by Williams, had players such as Rollie Fingers, Mickey Rivers, Toby Harrah, Dave Kingman, Ron Washington, Tim Stoddard, Will McEnaney and Pete Broberg.

"We had guys that knew how to play the game that wanted to still play on," Williams said. "Now guys are playing into their 40s. Most of our guys were maybe from 35 to 37, 38."

That job let Williams return to the Florida 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 Williams. "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."

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.

"My players believed in the way I wanted to operate," he said. "You're going to have some nonconformists at times, and I handled it the best I could. But they know I was a winner after I'd won at Boston."

But 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.

On Sunday, Williams will recall a career that began as a player with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951 and spanned almost half a century. But he said nothing has prepared him for the game's ultimate honor.

"It's like a new life," he said. "I get chills."