Dick Williams Final seasons in uniform What was one of the things he did in his final season? I don't know. Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? Williams' autocratic managing style no longer played with the new generation of ballplayers. Why didn't it work for the new generation? I don't know. Why didn't he continue managing? The Tropics folded at the end of the season, and the rest of the league folded a year later.
Is The Tropics the last team he managed?
Is The Tropics the last team Dick Williams managed?
When another perennial loser, the Seattle Mariners, lost 19 of their first 28 games in 1986 under Chuck Cottier, Williams came back to the American League West on May 6 for the first time in almost a decade. The Mariners showed some life that season and almost reached .500 the following season. However, Williams' autocratic managing style no longer played with the new generation of ballplayers. Williams was fired on June 8, 1988 with Seattle 23-33 and in sixth place. It would be his last major-league managing job. Williams' career won-loss totals were 1,571 wins and 1,451 losses over 21 seasons.  In 1989, Williams was named manager of the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, a league featuring mostly former major league players 35 years of age and older. The Tropics went 52-20 in the regular season and ran away with the Southern Division title. Despite their regular season dominance, the Tropics lost 12-4 to the St. Petersburg Pelicans in the league's championship game. The Tropics folded at the end of the season, and the rest of the league folded a year later.  He remained in the game, however, as a special consultant to George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees. In 1990, Williams published his autobiography, No More Mister Nice Guy. His acrimonious departure in 1969 distanced Williams from the Red Sox for the remainder of the Yawkey ownership period (through 2001), but after the change in ownership and management that followed, he was selected to the team's Hall of Fame in 2006.  Williams's number was recently retired by the Fort Worth Cats. The Cats were a popular minor league team in Fort Worth and Williams played there while he was working his way through the Dodgers system. The Cats merged/disbanded around 1960 but in recent years returned as an independent minor league team. The "New" Cats retired Williams' number. CANNOTANSWER
He remained in the game, however, as a special consultant to George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees.
Richard Hirschfeld Williams (May 7, 1929 – July 7, 2011) was an American left fielder, third baseman, manager, coach and front office consultant in Major League Baseball. Known especially as a hard-driving, sharp-tongued manager from 1967 to 1969 and from 1971 to 1988, he led teams to three American League pennants, one National League pennant, and two World Series triumphs. He is one of nine managers to win pennants in both major leagues, and joined Bill McKechnie in becoming only the second manager to lead three franchises to the Series. He and Lou Piniella are the only managers in history to lead four teams to seasons of 90 or more wins. Williams was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008 following his election by the Veterans Committee.

Biography

Playing career
Williams was born on May 7, 1929, in St. Louis, Missouri, and lived there until age 13, when his family moved to Pasadena, California. He attended Pasadena High School, and then enrolled in Pasadena City College. He signed his first professional contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, and played his first major league game with Brooklyn in 1951. A right-handed batter and thrower, Williams was listed as  tall and . Initially an outfielder, he separated a shoulder attempting to make a diving catch on August 25, 1952; he missed the rest of the season and permanently weakened his throwing arm. As a result, he learned to play several positions (he was frequently a first baseman and third baseman) and became a notorious "bench jockey" in order to keep his major league job.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/15/sports/bench-jockeying-lost-art-in-baseball.html Alfano, Peter (15 August 1983), "Bench Jockeying: A Lost Art in Baseball." ]The New York Times</ref> He appeared in 1,023 games over 13 seasons with the Dodgers, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics and Boston Red Sox. Williams posted a career batting average of .260; his 768 hits included 70 home runs, 157 doubles and 12 triples. In the field, he appeared in 456 games in the outfield, 257 at third base, and 188 at first.

He was a favorite of Paul Richards, who acquired Williams four different times between 1956 and 1962 when Richards was a manager or general manager with Baltimore and the Houston Colt .45s. Williams never played for Houston; he was acquired in an off-season "paper transaction" on October 12, 1962, then traded to the Red Sox for another outfielder, Carroll Hardy, on December 10.

His two-year playing career in Boston was uneventful, except for one occasion. On June 27, 1963, Williams was victimized by one of the greatest catches in Fenway Park history. His long drive to the opposite field was snagged by Cleveland right fielder Al Luplow, who made a leaping catch at the wall and tumbled into the bullpen with the ball in his grasp.

Managerial career

An "Impossible Dream" in Boston
On October 14, 1964, after a season during which Williams hit a career-low .159, the Red Sox handed him his unconditional release. At 35, Williams was at a career crossroads: Richards gave him a spring training invitation but no guarantee that he would make the 1965 Astros' playing roster; the Red Sox offered Williams a job as playing coach with their Triple-A farm team, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League. Looking to begin a post-playing career in baseball, Williams accepted the Seattle assignment. Within days, a shuffle in 1965 affiliations forced Boston to move its top minor league team to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League. This caused the Red Sox' Triple-A manager, Seattle native Edo Vanni, to resign in order to remain in the Pacific Northwest. With a sudden opening for the Toronto job, Williams was promoted to manager of the 1965 Leafs. As a novice pilot, Williams adopted a hard-nosed, disciplinarian style and won two consecutive Governors' Cup championships with teams laden with young Red Sox prospects. He then signed a one-year contract to manage the 1967 Red Sox.

Boston had suffered through eight straight seasons of losing baseball, and attendance had fallen to such an extent that owner Tom Yawkey was threatening to move the team. The Red Sox had talented young players, but the team was known as a lazy "country club." As Carl Yastrzemski commented, "if you don't keep your nose to the grindstone you won't (win)...we kept our noses so far away from the grindstone we couldn't even see it."

Williams decided to risk everything and impose discipline on his players. He vowed that "we will win more ballgames than we lose" — a bold statement for a club that had finished only a half-game from last place in 1966. The only team with a worse record than the Red Sox was their arch-rival, the New York Yankees, who were headed in a downward spiral only two years after losing the 1964 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. In spring training, Williams drilled players in fundamentals for hours.  He issued fines for curfew violations, and insisted his players put the success of the team before their own.  In Yastrzemski's words, "Dick Williams didn't take anything when he took over the club last spring...to the best of my knowledge—and I would know if it had happened—no one challenged Williams all season."

The Red Sox began 1967 playing better baseball and employing the aggressive style of play that Williams had learned with the Dodgers. Williams benched players for lack of effort and poor performance, and battled tooth and nail with umpires. Through the All-Star break, Boston fulfilled Williams' promise and played better than .500 ball, hanging close to the American League's four contending teams — the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, Chicago White Sox and California Angels. Outfielder Carl Yastrzemski, in his seventh season with the Red Sox, transformed his hitting style to become a pull-hitter, eventually winning the 1967 AL Triple Crown, leading the league in batting average, home runs (tying Harmon Killebrew of the Twins), and RBI.

In late July, the Red Sox rattled off a 10-game winning streak on the road and came home to a riotous welcome from 10,000 fans at Boston's Logan Airport. The Red Sox inserted themselves into a five-team pennant race, and stayed in the hunt despite the loss of star outfielder Tony Conigliaro to a beanball on August 18. On the closing weekend of the season, led by Yastrzemski and 22-game-winning pitcher Jim Lonborg, Boston defeated the Twins in two head-to-head games, while Detroit split its series with the Angels. The "Impossible Dream" Red Sox had won their first AL pennant since 1946, then they extended the highly talented and heavily favored St. Louis Cardinals to seven games in the 1967 World Series, losing to the great Bob Gibson three times.

Despite the Series loss, the Red Sox were the toasts of New England; Williams was named Major League Manager of the Year by The Sporting News and signed to a new three-year contract. But he would not serve it out. In 1968, the team fell to fourth place when Conigliaro could not return from his head injury, and Williams' two top pitchers — Lonborg and José Santiago — suffered sore arms. He began to clash with Yastrzemski, and with owner Yawkey. With his club a distant third in the AL East, Williams was fired on September 23, 1969 and replaced by Eddie Popowski for the last nine games of the season.

Two titles in a row in Oakland

After spending 1970 as the third base coach of the Montreal Expos, working under Gene Mauch, Williams returned to the managerial ranks the next year as boss of the Oakland Athletics, owned by Charlie Finley. The iconoclastic Finley had signed some of the finest talent in baseball – including Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi that were described by Finley as the "Swingin' A's" – but his players hated him for his penny-pinching and constant meddling in the team's affairs. During his first decade as the Athletics' owner, 1961–1970, Finley had changed managers a total of ten times.

Inheriting a second-place team from predecessor John McNamara, Williams promptly directed the A's to 101 victories and their first AL West title in 1971 behind another brilliant young player, pitcher Vida Blue. Despite being humbled in the ALCS by the defending World Champion Orioles, Finley brought Williams back for 1972, when the "Oakland Dynasty" began. Off the field, the A's players brawled with each other and defied baseball's tonsorial code. Because long hair, mustaches and beards were now the rage in the "civilian" world, Finley decided on a mid-season promotion encouraging his men to wear their hair long and grow facial hair. Fingers adopted his trademark handlebar mustache (which he still has to this day); Williams himself grew a mustache.

Of course, talent, not hairstyle, truly defined the Oakland Dynasty of the early 1970s. The 1972 A's won their division by 5½ games over the White Sox and led the league in home runs, shutouts and saves. They defeated the Tigers in a bitterly fought ALCS, and found themselves facing the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. With the A's leading power hitter, Jackson, out with an injury, Cincinnati's Big Red Machine was favored to win, but the home run heroics of Oakland catcher Gene Tenace and the managerial maneuvering of Williams resulted in a seven-game World Series victory for the A's, their first championship since 1930, when they played in Philadelphia.

In 1973, with Williams back for an unprecedented (for the Finley era) third straight campaign, the A's again coasted to a division title, then defeated Baltimore in the ALCS and the NL champion New York Mets in the World Series – each hard-fought series going the limit. With their World Series win, Oakland became baseball's first repeat champion since the 1961–62 New York Yankees. But Williams had a surprise for Finley. Tired of his owner's meddling, and upset by Finley's public humiliation of second baseman Mike Andrews for his fielding miscues during the World Series, Williams resigned. George Steinbrenner, then finishing his first season as owner of the Yankees, immediately signed Williams as his manager. However, Finley protested that Williams owed Oakland the final year of his contract and could not manage anywhere else, and so Steinbrenner hired Bill Virdon instead. Williams was the first manager in A's franchise history to leave the team with a winning record after running it for two full seasons.

From Southern California to Montreal and back

California Angels
Seemingly at the peak of his career, Williams began the 1974 season out of work. But when the Angels struggled under manager Bobby Winkles, team owner Gene Autry received Finley's permission to negotiate with Williams, and in mid-season Williams was back in a big-league dugout. The change in management, though, did not alter the fortunes of the Angels, as they finished in last place, 22 games behind the A's, who would win their third straight World Championship under Williams' replacement, Alvin Dark.

Overall, Williams' Anaheim tenure turned out to be a miserable one.  He did not have nearly as much talent as he'd had to work with in Boston and Oakland, and the Angels did not respond to Williams' somewhat authoritarian managing style.  They finished last in the AL West again in 1975.  During the 1975 season, Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee stated that the Angels' hitters were "so weak, they could hold batting practice in the Boston Sheraton hotel lobby and not hit the chandelier".  Williams responded by having his team actually do so before the game (using Wiffle balls and bats) with the Red Sox until hotel security put a stop to it.    The Angels were 18 games below .500 (and in the midst of a player revolt) in  1976 when Williams was fired July 22.

Montreal Expos
In 1977, he returned to Montreal as manager of the Expos, who had just come off 107 losses and a last-place finish in the NL East. Team president John McHale had been impressed with Williams' efforts in Boston and Oakland, and thought he was what the Expos needed to finally become a winner.

After cajoling the Expos into improved, but below .500, performances in his first two seasons, Williams turned the 1979–80 Expos into pennant contenders. The team won over 90 games both years—the first winning seasons in franchise history.  The 1979 unit won 95 games, the most that the franchise would win in Montreal. However, they finished second each time to the eventual World Champion (the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979 and the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980). Williams was never afraid to give young players a chance to play, and his Expos teams were flush with young talent, including All-Stars such as outfielder Andre Dawson and catcher Gary Carter.  With a solid core of young players and a fruitful farm system, the Expos seemed a lock to contend for a long time to come.

But Williams' hard edge alienated his players—especially his pitchers—and ultimately wore out his welcome. He labeled pitcher Steve Rogers a fraud with "king of the mountain syndrome" – meaning that Rogers had been a good pitcher on a bad team for so long that he was unable to "step up" when the team became good. Williams also lost confidence in closer Jeff Reardon, whom the Montreal front office had acquired in a much publicized trade with the Mets for Ellis Valentine. When the 1981 Expos performed below expectations, Williams was fired during the pennant drive on September 7. With the arrival of his easy-going successor Jim Fanning, who restored Reardon to the closer's role, the inspired Expos made the playoffs for the only time in their 36-year history in Montreal. However, they fell in heartbreaking fashion to Rick Monday and the eventual World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers in a five-game NLCS.

San Diego Padres
Williams was not unemployed for long, however.  In 1982, he took over the San Diego Padres. By 1984, he had guided the Padres to their first NL West Division championship. In the NLCS, the NL East champion Chicago Cubs – making their first postseason appearance since 1945 – won Games 1 and 2, but Williams' Padres took the next three games in a miraculous comeback to win the pennant. In the World Series, however, San Diego was no match for Sparky Anderson's Detroit Tigers, a team that had won 104 games during the regular season.  Although the Tigers won the Series in five games, both Williams and Anderson joined Dark, Joe McCarthy, and Yogi Berra as managers who had won pennants in both major leagues (Tony La Russa joined this group in 2004, Jim Leyland followed suit in 2006, followed by Joe Maddon in 2016 and Dusty Baker in 2021).

The Padres fell to third in 1985, and Williams was let go as manager just before 1986 spring training.  His record with the Padres was 337–311 over four seasons. As of 2011, he was the only manager in the team's history without a losing season. His difficulties with the Padres stemmed from a power struggle with team president Ballard Smith and general manager Jack McKeon.  Williams was a hire of team owner (and McDonald's restaurant magnate) Ray Kroc, whose health was failing.  McKeon and Smith (who also happened to be Kroc's son-in-law) were posturing to buy the team and viewed Williams as a threat to their plans.  With his San Diego tenure at an end, it appeared that Williams' managerial career was finished.

Final seasons in uniform
When another perennial loser, the Seattle Mariners, lost 19 of their first 28 games in 1986 under Chuck Cottier, Williams came back to the American League West on May 6 for the first time in almost a decade. The Mariners showed some life that season and almost reached .500 the following season. However, Williams' autocratic managing style no longer resonated with the new generation of ballplayers. He tried to play injury-plagued Gorman Thomas in the outfield, but was rebuked by the Mariners' front office because of Thomas' medical history, namely his rotator cuff.  Also, Williams had trouble relating to the devoutly religious Mariners' players, namely Alvin Davis.  Williams was fired on June 8, 1988 with Seattle 23–33 and in sixth place.  It would be his last major-league managing job. Williams' career won-loss totals were 1,571 wins and 1,451 losses over 21 seasons.

In 1989, Williams was named manager of the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, a league featuring mostly former major league players 35 years of age and older. The Tropics went 52–20 in the regular season and ran away with the Southern Division title. Despite their regular season dominance, the Tropics lost 12–4 to the St. Petersburg Pelicans in the league's championship game. The Tropics folded at the end of the season, and the rest of the league folded a year later.

He remained in the game, however, as a special consultant to George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees. In 1990, Williams published his autobiography, No More Mister Nice Guy. His acrimonious departure in 1969 distanced Williams from the Red Sox for the remainder of the Yawkey ownership period (through 2001), but after the change in ownership and management that followed, he was selected to the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2006.

Williams' number was retired by the Fort Worth Cats.  The Cats were a popular minor league team in Fort Worth and Williams played there during 1948, 1949 and 1950, while he was working his way through the Dodgers' system. Moreover, Williams—in his Hall off Fame speech—cited Bobby Bragan, his Fort Worth manager, as a significant influence on his own career.  After the Texas League Cats finally disbanded in 1964, they returned as an independent league team in 2001.  These "New" Cats retired Williams' number.

Hall of Fame induction
Williams was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in December 2007, and was inducted on July 27, 2008. He was inducted into the San Diego Padres Hall of Fame in 2009.

Managerial record

Personal life
Williams was an extra in the 1950 movie The Jackie Robinson Story. Before Williams became a major league manager in 1967, he successfully appeared on the television quiz shows Match Game and the original Hollywood Squares. According to Peter Marshall's Backstage with the Original Hollywood Squares, Williams won $50,000 as a contestant on the latter show.

His son, Rick Williams, a former minor league pitcher and major league pitching coach, became a professional scout for the Atlanta Braves. 

Williams died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm at a hospital near his home in Henderson, Nevada, on July 7, 2011.

Arrest
In January 2000, Williams pleaded no contest to indecent exposure charges in Florida. The complaint against him alleged that he was "walking naked and masturbating" on the balcony outside his hotel room. Williams subsequently stated that he was not aware of the details of the complaint when he pleaded no contest, and that although he was standing naked at the balcony door, he was not on the balcony and was not masturbating.

This occurred just weeks before Baseball Hall of Fame balloting by the Veterans Committee. Williams' arrest appeared to impact consideration by the committee, and he would not be inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame until 2008. "What happened to me down in Fort Myers when I was arrested evidently hurt me quite a bit", Williams told The New York Times.

See also
 List of Major League Baseball managers by wins

References

Further reading
Cooper, Steve, Red Sox Diehard, 1967 season retrospective. Boston: Dunfey Publishing Co., 1987.
Stout, Glenn and Johnson, Richard A., Red Sox Century.  Boston and New York: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 2000.
Williams, Dick, and Plaschke, Bill, No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Life of Hardball.'' San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovitch, 1990.

External links

 Dick Williams at SABR (Baseball BioProject)
Dick Williams at Baseball Library

1929 births
2011 deaths
American expatriate baseball people in Canada
American expatriate baseball players in Canada
Baltimore Orioles players
Baseball players from Pasadena, California
Baseball players from St. Louis
Boston Red Sox managers
Boston Red Sox players
Brooklyn Dodgers players
California Angels managers
Cleveland Indians players
Deaths from aortic aneurysm
Fort Worth Cats players
Kansas City Athletics players
Major League Baseball left fielders
Major League Baseball third base coaches
Montreal Expos coaches
Montreal Expos managers
Montreal Royals players
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
New York Yankees scouts
Oakland Athletics managers
St. Paul Saints (AA) players
San Diego Padres managers
San Diego Padres scouts
Santa Barbara Dodgers players
Seattle Mariners managers
Toronto Maple Leafs (International League) managers
World Series-winning managers
Florida Tropics SC is a professional soccer club based in Lakeland, Florida. They are owned by Central Florida Sports Ventures, LLC, led by Dr. Panos Iakovidis, and former USL commissioner and Rochester Rhinos owner Chris Economides. The organization was originally founded in 2015 as a team in the Major Arena Soccer League before expanding into other leagues.

The Tropics organization operates three senior teams across two different leagues. The first team is Florida Tropics SC, which plays in the professional Major Arena Soccer League. The club also fields two men's outdoor teams. The top outdoor is Tropics SC, which plays in the United Premier Soccer League First Division. There is also a Tropics Reserves team playing the UPSL's Second Division.

The club previously fielded a USL League Two team known as the Lakeland Tropics, and a Women's Premier Soccer League team.

In addition to the senior squads, the Tropics organization also oversees two youth clubs in Central Florida. Lakeland Tropics FC in Lakeland, and Celebration FC Tropics in Celebration.

History
On May 3, 2016, the Tropics, in conjunction with the newly formed IPL, held a press conference at the RP Funding Center and stated they would be joining the IPL alongside the Baltimore Blast, Harrisburg Heat, and St. Louis Ambush.  However, on August 29, 2016, it was announced that all IPL teams including Florida would be joining the MASL. The team finished 3rd in their division in their inaugural season, and averaged over 2,500 fans a game including one sell out. In their second season in the MASL, the Tropics again fell just short of the playoffs, finishing 3rd in the Eastern Division. It was in 2017 that the club fielded their first USL League Two franchise, and in 2019 a new squad was created to play in the UPSL Pro Premier Florida Division, who went on to win the leagues national championship. The official supporter group of the Tropics organization is the Swan City Syndicate.

The Tropics succeed the Tampa Bay area as the local indoor soccer club. The team is unrelated to the original Tampa Bay Rowdies, who were notorious for their indoor soccer success, as well as their outdoor. A current Rowdies team began to play in 2010 and is also unrelated to that club; the team exclusively plays outdoor soccer. Indoor soccer by the original Rowdies had officially ended when the team played in the American Indoor Soccer Association for one season (1986–87). For two seasons, another Tampa Bay area team played in the same league, from 1995 to 1997, called the Tampa Bay Terror; however, the team did not last more than two seasons, despite having some members of the Rowdies on the roster. It would not be until the Tropics first season that indoor soccer would return to the area.

Personnel

2021–22 roster

Active players
As of January 11, 2022

Inactive players

Staff
  Clay Roberts –  Head coach, (2016–present)
  Nick Olgee - Trainer, (2021–present)
  Dr. Panos Iakovidis - Team owner, (2017–present)

Notable players
  Rodrigo Fernandes Alflen – MASL
  Robbie Aristodemo - MASL
  Marko Bedenikovic – MASL
  Christian Blandon – MASL
  Lucas Coutinho – MASL & PDL
  Gordy Gurson – MASL
  Daniel Mendes – MASL
  Pascal Millien – UPSL
  David Paul – MASL
  Tosan Popo – MASL
  Victor Rojas - MASL & PDL
  Raheem Taylor-Parkes – PDL/League Two
  Juan Tejada – PDL

Venues
 RP Funding Center, Lakeland (MASL; 2016–present)
 Bryant Stadium, Lakeland (USL2 & WPSL; 2017–2019)
 St. Petersburg High School Stadium, St. Petersburg (WPSL; 2018)
 Lake Myrtle Sports Complex, Auburndale (UPSL & USOC; 2019–present)
 Tournament Sportsplex of Tampa Bay, Tampa (WPSL; 2019)
 Premier Sports Complex, Lakewood Ranch (WPSL; 2019)

References

External links
Official website - MASL team
Official website - PDL team

 
Major Arena Soccer League teams
Sports in Lakeland, Florida
Indoor soccer clubs in the United States
Soccer clubs in Florida
2016 establishments in Florida
Association football clubs established in 2016
Sports in Polk County, Florida
Tropics SC
Women's Premier Soccer League teams
Sports in St. Petersburg, Florida
Sports in Manatee County, Florida The Topeka Tropics are a professional indoor football team set to begin play as a member of Champions Indoor Football for the 2022 season.  Based in Topeka, Kansas, the Tropics will play their home games at the Stormont Vail Events Center.

History
The Tropics will be the third indoor football team to be based in Topeka following the Topeka Knights/Kings (1999–2000) and the Kansas Koyotes (2003–2014).

On August 9, 2021, Champions Indoor Football (CIF) announced an expansion team to be based in Topeka for the 2022 season with Sioux City Bandits' owner J. R. Bond serving as the team's owner. After a name-the-team contest was held, the Tropics name, logo, and color scheme were unveiled on September 8. Although Topeka does not have a tropical climate and is roughly 790 miles from the closest sea (the Gulf of Mexico), Bond chose the unusual name to symbolize how unconventional the Tropics organization would be both on and off the field. On October 5, the Tropics announced former Arena Football League player Tyus Jackson as its inaugural head coach.

Notes

External links
 Official website

Champions Indoor Football teams
American football teams in Kansas
Sports in Topeka, Kansas
American football teams established in 2021
2021 establishments in Kansas