Dick Williams and the 1967 Boston Red Sox.

Many writers and experts of the game have said that Williams was kind of a sergeant, a dictator, an ogre, when he assumed as manager of the Boston Red Sox since the spring of 1967. There are many versions and variations about his confrontations with George Scott and Joe Foy because of their weight excess, a lot of times Williams sent them to the bench and said he didn’t want any fat guy in his line up. There are also many stories about Dick Williams and Tony Conigliaro hard relationship, which is related to some incidents on and off the field in Tony C’s first season with the Red Sox, when Williams was a veteran player. It’s said that Tony C didn’t forget those moments when Williams threw a ball that almost hit Conigliaro on his head while coming out from the dugout in spring training, and what happened next day when he threw the ball back to Williams when he was distracted and Williams almost began a fight if not for Dick Stuart intervention. All this story went worse when Williams was designed Conigliaro’s roommate during his last season as a ballplayer. He went to talk with the manager and told him to swap him to another roommate because he was tired of rooming with Conigliaro’s suitcase, he didn’t see Tony C neither before nor after the games. Soon after that the Red Sox general manager fined Conigliaro with 1000 $. During Conigliaro`s convalescence because of the injury he suffered in his left eye, Tony C always felt badly about Williams because he didn`t go to visit at the hospital or send any card or note showing some support and sympathy. Even when Conigliaro shook hands the first time he returned to the clubhouse he kept feeling some resentment to Dick Williams, Tony C thought that Williams wasn`t trustful.

In the game 7 of the 1967 World Series, Sal Maglie, the pitching coach, told Dick Williams as early as the second inning that the starting pitcher wasn’t in his best day, he was tired, exhaust. Lonborg was starting that game with an only two days rest . According to Maglie, Williams should have showed more respect for Lonborg because of all the great games he had pitched for Boston during the season and his first two starts of the Series. Williams just answered “He’s not being hit so hard”. But even the lower part of the line up was hitting the ball against the outfield walls. Williams had another ten pitchers in the bullpen. If one of them could stop the Saint Louis Cardinals the Red Sox would keep the chance of winning the game. When Williams finally replaced Lonborg in the sixth inning, the Red Sox were already losing 7-1. After the game, Lonborg was crying in the dugout, he thought he had failed to his team. Maglie told him that wasn’t true, he had brought the Red Sox to the game 7 of the Series. “You did a great, tremendous job”. After reading about this behavior of Dick Williams in different books about the 1967 Boston Red Sox I got very sad. I didn’t believe that Williams could be so mean because in different magazines and papers from that time I have also read about Williams’ real reason for being so hard with his players: provoking them to give their best on the field. Anyway I kept searching for more sources which showed the other side of Williams his human quality, something told me there was something missing. Then I found the book “No More Mr. Nice Guy” written by Dick Williams and Bill Plashke. Finally I got the other version of the story. The reason of Williams, his point of view, his voice.

He lost his father when he was 16 years old because of a heart attack and felt guilty for more than forty years on that death. Williams said that if not for his father running down from the stand to the football field where he laid with an injury in his ankle, he would be still alive. Dick Williams kept saying “It was my fault my father died”. The father had been a role model for him, all his toughness and authority came from his father. By 1949 he learned about discipline in a baseball field when his manager with Class AA Fort Worth; Bobby Bragan made him to run with the pitchers because he thought Williams was fat, he had to run even in 100 degree heat. Other lesson Williams got from Bragan was his hating for losing as a manager, it certainly gained the respect from his players. Bragan also taught Williams about the importance of running in baseball, it could be seen in all of his world championship teams. As Williams says in his book, his playing career virtually came to an end on an August hot afternoon. It was 1952, his second season with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He had finally became the starting left fielder after moving past Andy Pafko. A pop up hit between Billy Cox, Pee Wee Reese and shallow left field made the third base and short stop players stop trying at catching the ball, Williams kept charging and charging, finally he dove and something popped in his right shoulder after hitting the ground. Williams never was the same player after that. He began an eleven-year career of bouncing through six different teams as a part time player or just the alternative player for a short period of time. He had the guts to reverse that bitterness into starting to watch the game from the analytical side. That was the beginning of Dick Williams conversion from player to manager.

Many years later George Scott ended thanking Williams for showing him his weaknesses and making a winner of him, during an interview for a newspaper while managing in Mexico. About Tony Conigliaro resentment, Williams said he had tried a lot of times to visit Conigliaro during his convalescence at the hospital but the owner Tom Yawkey didn’t permit it. Williams would have wished that Conigliaro had asked him about that. What really made me tremble and experience infinite shivers was the time when I read that during the fall of 1967, in the middle of the Impossible Dream, a local woman called Dick Williams with a request for her own miracle. Her son, Bobby Broderick, was dying of cancer and wanted to see Williams. It was at the end of an important home stand, but of course, Williams went. He didn’t remember much about the boy, only that he was about nine years old and frail and clinging to the hope that the Sox would might finally win the pennant. Even cocky Dick Wiliams didn’t have the guts to promise him that they would, only that they’d try; and then, walking away from him down the hospital corridor, he swore that yes, they would try. This really stretched my skin, the book almost fell from my hands, this kind of reason is what I want to have as a response anytime somebody talks about “that tedious and superficial game…”

Bobby Broderick died 36 hours later. His mother informed Williams of this in a letter, written carefully and neatly on thin blue stationery. Williams stored it carefully in one of his scrapbooks. Part of it goes like this: “There is no letter that can adequately describe the measure of happiness you gave Bobby Broderick and the people around him when you came to visit…A very special friend of ours who is a priest says Bobby is an angel or saint. He said, ‘Don’t pray for him, pray to him’. So, Mr. Williams, whether you want it or not, you have a real good “in” in heaven.”

Alfonso L. Tusa C.