Page 234 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 227
at was Stan Williams—throw the high heat and take your chances. e Dodgers decided they didn’t want to gamble with Williams any more, and traded him to the New York Yankees for Moose Skowron. Williams became part of a rotation that Bill James reckoned one of the best of all time. It included Whitey Ford (24-7), Jim Bouton (21-7), Ralph Terry (17-15), and Al Downing (13-5). Williams went 9-8 with a 3.21 ERA, 98 strikeouts, and only 57 walks in 146 innings. In 1963 he pitched three innings of scoreless relief for the Yankees as his former team, the Dodgers, swept the Yankees in the teams’ rst World Series matchup since 1956.
Williams also pitched for the pennant-winning 1964 Yankees, but was hurt and didn’t pitch well. He nished with a 1-5 record and the Yankees traded him to the Indians for the 1965 season. Years later, Williams explained his injury to a fan in a letter. “I injured my arm on one freak pitch. Slipped on rubber. My arm got progressively worse each year for 61⁄2 years. ree of those years home or in the minors. One day, I lifted my arm. Something ‘popped’ (hurt like crazy) — but suddenly my arm was sound again. Within a month, I was back in Majors and stayed another seven years.”11
Williams pitched in Spokane in 1966, but returned to the Indians in 1967 for a 6-4 record and a 2.62 ERA. In 1968 he became a full- edged member of another rotation that made Bill James’s list of one of the all- time greatest rotations. e big pitching stars for the team that year were Sudden Sam McDowell and Luis Tiant, a pitcher who became a close friend and one Williams would later coach on the Red Sox. Tiant and McDowell recorded over 200 strikeouts and ERAs under 2.00. Tiant won 21 games, McDowell 15, and Williams went 13-11 with a 2.50 ERA and 147 strikeouts.
Before 1969 the owners lowered the pitcher’s mound and shrank the strike zone. Not every pitcher could adjust. Williams went 6-14 for a terrible Indians team and after the season he was traded to the Minnesota Twins. Williams performed marvelously in relief for the division champion Twins, posting a 10-1 won-lost record, a 1.99 ERA and 15 saves. He pitched six score- less innings in relief during the Twins’ 3-0 ALCS loss
to Baltimore. at gave Williams a 0.00 postseason ERA for his career.
After the 1970 season the Twins gave Williams a 33 percent raise, from $30,000 to $40,000, the most he ever made as a player. He pitched poorly early in 1971, and the Twins traded the 35-year-old to St. Louis. Williams landed with the Red Sox in 1972, but ended up back in the minors before the year was over, and he didn’t pitch in the majors again. After a year out of the game, Williams managed the Red Sox’ Eastern League a liate in Bristol (Connecticut), and won his division. Williams even pitched and won a couple of games for the team himself.
Williams may have had control problems as a pitcher, but his early success as a minor-league manager led Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson to bring him to the big leagues as pitching coach. Williams coached a sta that included his former Indians teammate and good friend Luis Tiant, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Oil Can Boyd, and other eccentrics. In Williams’s rst year coaching, the1975 Red Sox won the pennant. eir World Series against the Big Red Machine of Cincinnati has been considered one of the greatest of all time.
Williams stayed in baseball for the rest of his working life. After the Red Sox, he coached pennant-winning sta s for the Yankees (1981) and Reds (1990). While in general the work of coaches tends to take place behind the scenes, Williams’s winning record as a coach is evidence that his work with players paid dividends.
For example, Red Sox reliever Steve Barr credited Williams with teaching what he needed to know to stay in the big leagues for the 1975 season. Barr told a reporter that Williams “totally tore my game down and built it up piece by piece, If it wasn’t for Williams I don’t know if I’d have the opportunity to make the club that I have now.”12 Williams helped all the pitchers on his team, not just the stars.
More crucial to the Red Sox’ success in 1975 was Williams’s role in keeping Luis Tiant in baseball. Both