A Winning Manager Who Knew Baseball Inside and Out

Hey baseball fans!

The San Diego Padres play their first game of the 2014 MLB season today against the Dodgers, so I wanted to talk about the man who was their manager for their first World Series appearance in 1984.

Dick Williams  didn’t have the best playing career, but he was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008 as a manager. For 21 seasons, he managed the Red Sox, Athletics, Angels, Expos, Padres, and Mariners, and ended up winning many games, despite managing bad teams for most of his career. To be specific, out of 3,023 games managed, he won 1,571 of them, which ends up being a .520 win percentage. He won four pennants during his managerial career, one in 1967 with the Sox, two with the A’s in 1972 and 1973, and one with the Padres in 1984. He only won the Fall Classics with the A’s, but Williams is one of two managers (along with Hall of Famer  Bill McKechnie ) in baseball history to win pennants with three teams and one of just seven managers to win pennants in both the AL and NL. He is also one of two managers in baseball history (the other being  Lou Piniella ) to lead four different teams to 90+ win seasons.

In short,  Dick Williams  was all about winning, and win he did time and time again. Thanks for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it and check back in a few days for more of “all the buzz on what wuzz.”