Page 231 - 1975 BoSox

STAN WILLIAMS WORKED IN PRO- fessional baseball for more than 50 years. e Dodgers signed the big, tall, right-handed
reballer after he completed high school in the 1950s, and he was still on a major-league payroll as a scout as late as 2010.
Williams had a knack for contributing to winning teams. In just his second season, his team, the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers, won the World Series. Williams was a member of two starting rotations that Bill James considered among the greatest of all time — the 1963 Dodgers and the 1968 Indians.1 As a pitcher, Williams sometimes struggled with control of his pitches and himself.
After his playing career, Williams became an e ective mentor as pitching coach, scout, and adviser to several teams. As a pitching coach, he helped the Red Sox, Yankees, and Reds win division, league, and World Series championships.
Stanley Wilson Williams was born in En eld, New Hampshire, in 1936 to Irving Williams, a construction worker, and his wife, Evelyn. Stan was the baby of the family. He had two older brothers, Irving Jr. and Gordon, and an older sister, Doris. e Williams family relocated shortly after Stanley was born. US Census records show the family in Denver by 1940, when Stan was 3. He grew up on Denver’s East Side, starring in baseball and football for East Side High. e Brooklyn Dodgers’ Denver-based
bird-dog scout Manuel Boody and the Dodgers’ Bert Wells signed him out of high school in 1954 when he was 17. He attended spring training with the big- league club, and more than 50 years later still talked about how Jackie Robinson impressed him with his desire and work ethic.
Williams started his pro career with Shawnee of the Class-D Sooner State League. He went 3-5 with a 4.57 ERA. Williams’s potential was seen as so great that even after that rocky rst season the Dodgers promoted him to Class-B Newport News (Piedmont League). ere in 1955 Williams came into his own, winning 18 games against 7 losses with a 2.42 ERA.
It’s not surprising that the Dodgers kept an eye on Williams. It would be hard to ignore a 6-foot-4, 225- pound pitcher with a fastball over 90 miles per hour. e team continued to advance him despite occasional struggles. In 1956 his ERA was over 5.00 at Double-A Fort Worth, but the Dodgers promoted him to Triple-A St. Paul. He pitched a little better in St. Paul, with an ERA just over 4.00. In 1957 the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and Williams stayed in St. Paul.
In Williams’s rst full Triple-A year he pitched well enough for a 19-7 record and a 3.04 ERA. He struck out 223 batters in 246 innings but walked 148. He started the 1958 season again in St. Paul, but after he went 2-3 with a 2.81 ERA, the Dodgers brought him to Los Angeles.
Williams joined a pitching sta that included another 21-year-old, Don Drysdale, fastball phenomenon Sandy Koufax, and Johnny Podres, winner of the game that gave the Brooklyn Dodgers their only world championship. Many players from Brooklyn had trouble adjusting to the unusual dimensions of the
Dodgers’ temporary home, the Los Angeles Coliseum, and the team n- ished seventh.
Williams made his major-league debut on May 17, 1958. Manager Walt Alston brought him in against the St. Louis Cardinals after Don Newcombe and Sandy Koufax had been knocked out. Williams pitched three innings and gave
Stan Williams
by Peter M. Gordon
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