The 1972 season would deliver the championship that Dick, Finley and the A's were looking for, although not without a set of fights that filled the Oakland clubhouse with angry noise and the sports pages with lively reportage: Blue vs. pitcher Blue Moon Odom, Jackson vs. first baseman Mike Epstein, Epstein vs. Dick, etc. The Brawling A's became a legend, underscoring the idea that a team didn't have to get along to go the distance.

Oakland got to the World Series even though Dick had to indulge one of Finley's less-than-brilliant ideas. In light of second baseman Dick Green's injury, plus his weak bat when he was available, Finley insisted they try an innovation: pinch-hit for the second baseman every time through the line-up. That way, Finley thought, it wouldn't matter that none of them could hit. Not only did this burn up bench players, it forced the skipper to use non-middle infielders when he ran out of real second basemen. Everyone got pressed into service at second, including catchers Larry Haney and Gene Tenace, third baseman Sal Bando and outfielder Curt Blefary, who was nicknamed "Clank" for his horrendous fielding rather than his heavy hitting.

Finley, however, does deserve some credit for his efforts in 1972. He executed an unusually high 62 major league roster transactions, hoping to arm his club with a range of valuable options. He also paid players and coaches to grow mustaches, not only to defuse a potential grooming issue, but to market a unique image.

The A's won 93 games and were as balanced in their play on the field as they seemed imbalanced in their conduct off it. The team finished second in the league in runs scored (604), second in runs allowed (457), and second in defense (.732 defensive efficiency rate).

Oakland defeated the Tigers in a five-game playoff series and faced Cincinnati's Big Red Machine in the World Series. The Reds were as balanced as the A's (also second in runs scored, second in runs allowed, and second in defensive efficiency). Unlike the A's, they featured tidy haircuts and clean-shaven faces.

Oakland had already suffered a huge loss when number-three hitter and center fielder Reggie Jackson went down ith a hamstring injury. Then odd events followed the A's into the Series. With death threats against Oakland players made by Cincinnati fans being taken seriously, an unclaimed suitcase was found among the team's possessions. When no one claimed it, security feared it might be a bomb, gingerly took it out to the deserted field and carefully shot it open. It was filled to its scuppers with Finley's shoes.

In the series, Dick pulled off a range of extraordinary managerial moves. Against baseball tradition, he bypassed veterans with playoff experience and used young George Hendrick to replace Jackson in center. At catcher, he went counter to the "one that got you there" practice of sticking with his most frequent starters and decided to go with back-up Gene Tenace instead of Dave Duncan, who had hit 19 homers. Dick's rationale? On a team with four other homer hitters, a fifth didn't make as much difference.

Tenace opened the scoring with a two-run homer in the second inning of Game 1 and later delivered the game-winning hit, another homer, in the fifth. In Game 2, with a 2-0 lead in the sixth, Dick put in defensive replacement Mike Hegan at first for slugger Mike Epstein. Hegan made a game-saving play in the bottom of the ninth by spearing a César Gerónimo liner that would have gone for extra bases.

In Game 3, Dick executed a trick he had learned from his childhood team's manager, Billy Southworth. With Bobby Tolan on first and Johnny Bench at the plate, Tolan stole second on a 2-1 count. When Rollie Fingers threw a strike to run the count full, Dick went to the mound and appeared to chew out his reliever for giving Bench something good to hit. In reality, Dick instructed Fingers and Tenace to pretend they were going to issue an intentional walk. Bench fell for it, and then watched helplessly as Fingers fanned him with a strike on the outside corner.

Behind 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth in Game 4, Dick called for three consecutive pinch-hitters (Gonzalo Márquez, Don Mincher, and Angel Mangual) and each delivered a hit to help win the game. In the eighth inning of Game 7, Oakland was up 3-1 with runners on second and third and one out. Dick had Fingers intentionally walk the cold Bench to load the bases for the hot Tony Perez, putting the go-ahead run on base. But he also set up a force-out or double play. This belied standard baseball dogma, but the strategem succeeded.

For the 1972 World Series, every move Dick made turned to gold (and green). His dream of unquestionable, documented success—that even his father would have found exhilarating—was a tonic.

In 1973, relations between Dick and the intrusive Finley worsened. Dick, paid to be Finley's advocate with the players and the players' advocate with Finley, found playing go-between increasingly challenging, mostly because of the owner's conduct.

At 94-68, the A's led the league in runs scored per game, and ranked second in runs allowed and defensive efficiency. Oakland made it back to the World Series and beat the New York Mets, but not until Finley had poisoned the pleasure. After second baseman Mike Andrews made two costly errors in Game 2, Finley humiliated Andrews by forcing him to sign a false affidavit declaring he was injured. That enabled Finley to replace him on the series roster with a personal favorite. Dick explained his employer's decision to the media, but at the same time, prompted by his sense of integrity, made it clear that he didn't agree with it. In that moment, he realized his position was untenable, that he would have to resign. In a clubhouse meeting he called before Game 3, Dick told his players he had set a new record for a Finley manager (three full seasons). After the series, however, he was moving on, even though he was signed to a contract for another year.

For six years—the three under Dick and the three following—Oakland was almost a dynasty. Some of the players believe Dick was the element that made them so successful. Blue, for example, on hearing his manager had been elected to the Hall of Fame said, "He's always joking about how he rode our coattails, but he's the one who taught us to play winning baseball. Dick Williams was that X-factor."

Odom was also impressed. "With Dick, you had to give 100 percent all the time," he said. "I had no problem with that, and with him as manager, we felt no one could beat us."

Dick wasn't particularly worried about leaving Oakland. In fact, he was confident the he had a back-up plan—a close-to-tampering September offer he had received from the new ownership group of the New York Yankees. But that did not work out, thanks to Finley.

The Oakland owner knew his manager's contract had value, and, as always, he never let an opportunity to make money go by. Precedent made clear that Finley was entitled to cash or prospects or a player from New York. He demanded both the Yankees' most promising young everyday player, outfielder Otto Velez, and their most promising young pitcher, Scott McGregor. It was an unacceptable price, and one Dick knew was doomed to quash the deal.

Within a few weeks, John D. MacArthur, a multimillionaire philanthropist who valued excellence in all realms, literally knocked on the Williams's door unannounced and offered Dick a job, with a raise over his baseball salary. Dick worked with MacArthur for six months, until a baseball offer came that Finley would accept, from a team Finley was confident would be no danger to the Athletics' hegemony.

In June, Dick was recruited by California Angels general manager Harry Dalton, at the insistence of team owner Gene Autry. This was not the free-spending Autry of the free-agency era—this was the 13-year owner of a major-market team, a man who Dick believed tried to get talent on the cheap, and who delivered teams that were middling at best. In the previous seven seasons, the Angels had finished at or above .500 only once, 86-76 in 1970, which was good enough for 3rd place in a six-team division.

Dick wasn't impressed by Autry's style. "They lost simply because the players were like day-old, marked-down doughnuts," he said. "They came cheap and even then they weren't worth the money."

Whitey Herzog, a former teammate of Dick's who had made a post-playing career out of player development and who was serving as Angels interim manager, warned Dick the system was not loaded with young talent. But this may not have been the reason California struggled to deliver winning teams. Harold Parrott, who had served in the Angels' front-office before Dick’s arrival, blamed the team's consistent underachievement on the lack of focus caused by years of warring cliques in management, plus the owner's disinclination to discipline any of the participants.

Regardless why the dysfunction existed, Dick suspected that taking the job was a mistake, but his competitive drive was too strong to contain. He craved the immediate, strong feedback of winning or losing a game, something missing from MacArthur's corporate world. Dick jumped at the suicide mission and lashed himself to California's fate. In his first partial season, the Angels went 36-48, which was little different from what his predecessor had been able to coax out of the club. He felt the team was imbued with a self-reinforcing culture of contentment in losing.

The 1974 Angels had two ace pitchers, Nolan Ryan and young Frank Tanana, and almost no offense. With no batter with any real power and a group of fast, young players, Dick experimented with stealing bases and taking extra bases as the foundation of a strategy to create runs. The Angels would pilfer 119, 220 and 126 bases during his tenure. It wasn't that he had fallen in love with the strategy as optimal—rather, it was the only affordance he had to leverage what talent existed on the roster.

The 1975 team finished 70-91, and for the first time in Angels’ history, ownership coughed up assets to acquire talent in its prime: a pair of home run hitters, Bobby Bonds and Bill Melton, who between them had more power than the rest of the squad combined. But Bonds broke his hand in a spring exhibition against the Dodgers, insisted on playing through the injury, and never attained his full force. Dick believes the team lost heart, "a lethal combination of bad and uncaring."

True or not, by the end of June of 1976, California stood at 29-45, a great disappointment to ownership and to Dick. The manager and his coaches decided to ride the roster hard, especially the relaxed players. They offered unequivocal critique, even insults. It produced no results, except to make the clubhouse more tense. After nearly coming to blows with the underperforming, overweight third baseman Melton on the team bus, Dick was fired by Dalton.

Dick idled for the rest of the season. Near the end of the year, he called Montreal executive John McHale, for whom he'd worked as a third base coach in 1970. Dick asked for the franchise's managing job. He knew Les Expos had plenty of young talent in their system, a new general manager he liked in Charlie Fox, and a seven-year history of losing records, including a 55-107 campaign in 1976.

It was a tasty prospect for a turnaround artist, and quite a difference from the environment in California—a different kind of organization, different country, different league. Further, Norma and Dick both had a deep affection for the classic city they had grown to appreciate when he worked there several years earlier. He knew he would face a few tough years, but he was thinking of a World Series at the end of the tunnel.

The 1977 Expos won 20 more games under Dick than they had the year before, on the bats and arms and gloves of young talent. Larry Parrish and Steve Rogers, regulars in ’76, were joined by Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Ellis Valentine, Warren Cromartie and Tony Perez. Dick removed catcher Barry Foote and installed Carter. He penciled in a rookie outfield of Dawson, Valentine and Cromartie. Perez was added for the extra boost a young team frequently enjoys when they have a veteran with experience winning a pennant.

Dick got the Expos to be more patient at the plate (unusual for a team with so many young players), and they boosted their walks by about 10 percent. He also convinced them to run the bases aggressively. They surged to the league lead in doubles. Montreal improved to the middle of the pack in both pitching and batting.

In 1978, Montreal bettered its record by a single game, winning 76, while outscoring their opponents, 633-611. Despite their offensive output, the Expos found it difficult to beat the good teams. Against the five with the best records—Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and San Francisco—they were 29-43.

In 1979, the team joined the league's elite, combining a balanced offense with a pitching staff that blended the young and old. From April 11 to the end of the season, the Expos occupied either first place or second. First battling the Phillies and Cardinals, and later the "We Are Family" Pirates, Montreal held on to the top spot as late as September 24 with a half-game lead. The pitching turned shaky down the stretch, with Rogers and 23-year-old Scott Sanderson losing blowout games to the Bucs. The Expos finished two games behind Pittsburgh, the team that proved to be the World Series winner.

The season revealed an unusual aspect of Dick’s management style. He wasn't biased against young players (or old), and he wasn't afraid to give a young player a chance to compete with an established veteran (and not just in the Carter decision). His second baseman in Montreal had been Dave Cash, a three-time All-Star who had an adequate bat and a great glove. He had been in playoffs and a World Series, and was the kind of veteran managers usually stick with beyond their shelf life. But in spring training, Williams spotted that Cash's fielding range dropping. Even though Cash looked like he was still able to hit, the skipper moved Rodney Scott into the position.

"He hit about .195 with no power and he could steal a base,” Dick remembered. “He didn't swing at a pitch without two strikes on him ... that would get pitchers mad and they'd throw at him. He could make all the plays at second base or short."

Dick found in the very incomplete Scott a few talents and made the most of them. He used Scott at second base and shortstop, encouraged his irritating batting style and worked around his weaknesses. As Carter said of the manager, "He's always gotten the best out of his players."

The 1980 season turned out to be a similar experience. The Expos grabbed first place on June 11 and stayed in the lead until game 159. They were fourth best in scoring runs and fifth best in pitching. Their offense led the league in walks. But again, the young (this year even younger from an influx of prospects) Expos flagged in the home stretch. They fell short of the division title by a single game.

The 1981 campaign would be Dick’s last in Montreal. He believed the players were tired of him. Dick feuded with several Expos, including newly acquired reliever Jeff Reardon.

McHale was uncomfortable with the skipper's tactical aggressiveness. "Late in the season," Dick related, "I pinch hit for the last first baseman I had in the bottom of the ninth and we won. John said to me after, 'That made no sense; what would you have done if you hadn't won the game?' And I told him, 'You played first (base). I played first. ANYONE can play first.'" It wasn't clear if McHale was fearful that aggressive tactical innovation might make the Expos look bad, or if he simply preferred conservative operating procedures.

On June 11, with the team 30-25 and in fourth place, the Players Association and owners were unable to come to an agreement on an ownership proposal to roll back free-agency gains. The season stopped until the sides reached a compromise. Play resumed on August 10. The interrupted season spawned a scheme to add a layer of playoffs by dividing the year into pre-strike and post-strike halves, with the divisional winner of each half meeting in a pre-playoff playoff.

Montreal's record was 14-12 on September 7, just 1 1/2 games behind the division-leading Cardinals, when McHale fired Dick. Under new manager Jim Fanning, the Expos won the second half and beat the first-half leaders, the Phillies, three games to two in the first round of the playoffs. In the NL Championship Series, they lost to the Dodgers in the final inning of the final game.

Dick viewed that team as his finest creation, one that had learned everything he had to teach. He mourned their loss to the Dodgers, rooting for his squad even after being fired. Rookie outfielder Tim Raines batted .304 in 88 games, with a .391 on-base percentage and 71 steals. Dawson had his career year (.553 slugging, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards). A tough bullpen was cobbled together from aging starters Woody Fryman and Bill Lee, plus Reardon.

That season was the zenith of the franchise's accomplishment, albeit partly through tough luck. While the team never got to another post-season series, the Expos had the best record in the majors in 1994 when the owners forced a strike and Commissioner Bud Selig canceled the playoffs.

Out of a job, Dick was still driven, perhaps more stoked than usual, by the premature finish to his Expo cycle. He had gotten the Red Sox and A's into World Series before his time expired. He wanted another challenge. So in the ensuing off-season, when he was courted by the National League's sad-sack franchise, the Padres, he accepted the position. San Diego had 13 years of uninterrupted losing, holding a death grip on the cellar seven of those years. The team’s 41-69 record in 1981 left them in last place in both half-seasons.

San Diego had more talent than the Angels, but Dick saw the same comfortable-with-losing clubhouse. However, in GM "Trader" Jack McKeon, he had a co-conspirator who was willing to turn over the roster to weed out those unable to get fired up, or those like Ozzie Smith, whose unhappiness pulled the rest of the players down. At the winter meetings, he and McKeon worked out a deal with the Cardinals' Whitey Herzog, swapping Smith and a reliever for shortstop Garry Templeton and outfielder Sixto Lezcano. It was a big win for both teams.

In Dick’s first season, the Padres rose to .500 for the first time in their history. At 81-81, it was the equivalent of a 20-victory improvement over the shortened previous season's winning percentage. Catcher Terry Kennedy had a career year, Lezcano was excellent, and Templeton's quiet grit helped harden the team's resolve.

McKeon brought up a rookie outfielder who would play a critical role in the team's near and later successes: Tony Gwynn. Dick and Trader Jack had tweaked the squad, while Dick had hammered some desire for winning into the Pads, and they responded in all facets of the game. San Diego climbed from eleventh to seventh in runs scored per game, becoming one of the league's most potent offenses on the road. The team also improved from ninth to sixth in runs allowed, in part because the club went from ninth to first in defensive efficiency.

The 1983 Padres moved sideways, again with 81 wins, but the players were learning to understand the Dick Williams game. McKeon added power in outfielders Kevin McReynolds and Carmelo Martinez, and acquired first baseman Steve Garvey. While the veteran first sacker's best years were clearly past him, he provided a model of the hard-work ethic Dick favored and a positive mental attitude that helped dispel some more of the team's lax attitude.

Young pitchers amped it up or got shipped out—like Chris Welsh. In a late April start, Dick signaled for a pitchout, hoping the runner on first would try to steal and get gunned out. Welsh instead tried a pickoff, the opposite of the manager’s aim. When pitching coach Norm Sherry went to the mound to explain the difference, Welsh told him he would do it his own way, and if the coaching staff didn't like it, they could get someone else. Dick warmed up a reliever and yanked Welsh at the end of the inning. McKeon got rid of him before his next start.

Dick loved such opportunities to drive his point home. According to his theory of leadership, such tactics buoy the hard-chargers who want to win, because they believe management is taking notice of serious effort. At the same time, those players opposed to Dick‘s style would work harder to prove him wrong incidentally helping the team achieve better performance. Dick thought this team was on the cusp of breaking out.

For the 1984 season, McKeon added what he and Dick thought was necessary to put the Padres over the top: an intense veteran who could model winning behavior and enforce as a peer. When third baseman Craig Nettles and reliever Goose Gossage joined San Diego, Dick got just what he was looking for.

After a seven-game losing streak that held them to an 18-18 start, the Padres began running on all cylinders. Dick believed the team responded either with anger at his chronic critique of mental mistakes or simply from a desire to prove him wrong. A 15-5 run took them to first place on June 9 with a 33-23 mark. They didn't yield that spot through the end of the season, finishing 92-70.

The Padres showed their grit late in the year against Joe Torre's Atlanta Braves. On August 12, a beanball war erupted between the two teams. The trigger was an early-game revenge move against San Diego second baseman Alan Wiggins, who had gone 5-for-5 against the Braves in the previous game. When Wiggins was nailed in the back by pitcher Pascual Perez, the home plate umpire warned both managers. The Padres tried unsuccessfully to plunk a jumpy Perez, and Dick and his starter were ejected. It took three San Diego pitchers to hit Perez, which, in baseball norms, would have equalized the situation. But Torre's pitcher, Donnie Moore, responded by hitting Nettles. The donnybrook continued, leading to 16 ejections, fines, suspensions, and all manner of long-term hostility. People tend to remember Dick for this renowned brouhaha, but not the genteel Torre's equal part in it.

Between the tension and Dick's desire to win, his alcohol intake spiraled out of control. A mid-September bar argument with low-achieving outfielder Martinez put his behavior in the public eye—and the front office on alert. Management worried about the team's image in ultra-mellow San Diego, not to mention Dick's hair-trigger inclination to offend the many devout Christians and the right-wing political activists on the team. After the argument, though, Martinez went on a hot streak, batting .349 the rest of the way.

In the NLCS, San Diego faced the Chicago Cubs, who made it to the post-season for the first in nearly 40 years of infamous futility. The Cubs hammered the Padres in the first two games, and Dick’s club looked and felt dead. But led by Garvey's heroics, Templeton's cheerleading and endless comebacks, the Padres won their first pennant.

San Diego's World Series opponent, the Detroit Tigers, had taken sole possession of first place in the season's fourth game, a position they would never lose, going 104-58. It was a balanced team that finished first in batting, first in pitching, and first in defensive efficiency. Detroit burned through the Padres in five games in what looked like a foregone conclusion from the first syllable of "The Star-Spangled Banner." No amount of inspired tactical legerdemain or inspirational speechmaking would enable the Padres to overcome that Tiger squad. In the fifth and final game, Detroit's Kirk Gibson made one of the greatest unrecognized plays in World Series history when he tagged up and scored the go-ahead run on an infield pop-up.

The series archive included an incident that provided an insight into Dick’s personnel management. In the eighth inning of the final game, down by only one run, the Tigers had runners on second and third with one out when the hot-hitting Gibson came to the plate. Dick signaled his pitcher, Gossage, to intentionally walk the lefty, a near-automatic move that sets up a force at every base and the possibility of an inning-ending double play. Gossage started yelling into the dugout, and Dick trotted out to hear what was on Goose's mind. Gossage wanted to pitch to Gibson—he didn't want to give in. The numbers told Dick it was a lower-percentage move, but his decision was to let the pitcher go with his best stuff.

"My principle has been, it's his earned run average,” said Dick. “It's his butt. If I can help him succeed, fine, but if he fails, he won't be able to live with himself unless he fails his way."

Williams channeled his father's commitment to accountability, but rolled in his own, directly opposite twist: delegation. The result? "The first pitch Gossage threw broke three seats in the right field stands," a game-altering homer as Dick recalled.

Even with the disappointment of losing, it was a big season for the Padres’ franchise. For the third time, Dick had turned a chronic loser into a financial success; for the third time, a Williams team had set a franchise attendance record.

After the season, however, McKeon purged Dick’s coaches and installed his own loyalists. The GM's desire to resurrect his mediocre field managing career (286-310 until then), combined with Dick’s inability to fully control his unruly behavior would lead to the skipper's departure. In 1985, the Padres went into the All-Star break just a half-game out of first, needing one more starting pitcher to keep up.  McKeon, for perhaps the only time in his career, made no deals, and the team struggled, finishing 83-79. The front office forced Dick out, announcing his termination on the first day of spring training in 1986. He was enraged that the team made it look as if he had quit on his players, but he could not speak up because of a gag clause in his contract.

Dick would be lured to one more major league managing position, yet again with a sad-sack franchise, the young and under-funded Mariners. Seattle brought him on 28 games into the 1986 campaign, and he led the team to a listless 58-75 mark, a little better than his predecessors. Of the 14 main players, only two had reached the age of 30, though there were five relatively expensive veterans. The team appeared to have a healthy proportion of young talent in Mark Langston, Mike Moore, Alvin Davis, Danny Tartabull, Harold Reynolds, and Phil Bradley, but Dick felt they were listless and content with losing. Ever driven, Dick wanted to prove he still had the magic, and he assumed the tightwad millionaire owner, George Argyros, would eventually spend to win.

In 1987, Dick’s first full season, the Mariners achieved their best-ever record at 78-84. Five troublesome vets had been released, three young but undisciplined players traded. Dick believed he needed some experienced talent, but Argyros would not open his wallet. Ownership was generous, Dick believed, with one thing they shouldn't have been: unconditional love for the players. So his attempts at discipline went under-supported or even undermined. It would prove his downfall the following season.

Seattle's best hurler was 26-year-old Langston, who believed he, not the manager, should decide when he came out of games. Dick could not tolerate this impertinence, but the front office backed the franchise's crown jewel. Dick, meanwhile, stubbornly campaigned for what all of baseball views as the manager's right.

On July 27, Langston started the ninth inning with a 3-0 lead against the division-leading Twins. The pitcher kept peering into the dugout, silently asking to be taken out. Dick didn't sympathize, "He was the team's best pitcher," he said, "if he couldn't win this game when it counted, then the Seattle Mariners could never win games when it counted. He had to get tough. His teammates had to get tough."

Langston blew the lead. Ownership was upset, but ultimately considered the financial bottom line the true measure of success—winning was only a side dish. Dick was demoralized and angry, although it didn't always show at work.

Forty-six games into the 1987 season, Dick was gone. The Mariners did not post a winning record until 1991—after new ownership took over and young stars Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez arrived.

Williams never again managed in the majors. In 1990, he skippered the West Palm Beach Tropicals in the Senior Professional Baseball Association, an attempt to put retired players in competition with each other in a league format. After that, he did occasional scouting for San Diego, gathering intelligence on Triple A players when they traveled to Las Vegas, where he lived. He worked for George Steinbrenner and the Yankees as an adviser through 2002.

In January 2000, while attending a fantasy camp, Dick was arrested on an indecent-exposure charge at his motel. He allegedly walked around the grounds naked. He pleaded no contest, according to court records.  This happened within two months of the 2000 Veterans Committee Hall of Fame vote, and it's been alleged, but not documented, that Williams missed out that year and for the next six years because of the incident. The Hall did not make those vote counts public.

Dick is still married to Norma, and they live in the Las Vegas area, where he acted as the analyst for Sunday broadcasts for the Pacific Coast League's Las Vegas 51s.

Dick's managerial career was remarkable within baseball. He ranks 18th on the all-time win list with 1,571 victories over 21 seasons. Yet the key skills that made him an exceptionally successful turnaround artist and leader are even more precious in non-baseball management. He had the talent to use what resources were on hand. He won with different kinds of teams, not relying on a rigid protocol to be a roadmap to success. He could adapt his tactics to the roster he had, something few managers in or out of baseball can do.

At the same time, Dick was unafraid to take chances to improve his personnel. He observed, monitored and analyzed his young players, determining when his team would be able to take an immediate-term hit in experience as an investment in the development of a player who could become an All-Star. Stars who got their first chance under Williams, or who have stated he "taught me how to win," include Hall of Famers Gary Carter, Reggie Jackson, and Tony Gwynn.

In December 2007, the Veterans Committee elected Dick to the Hall of Fame. And which team's hat is he wearing on his plaque? Unsurprisingly, the cap of the franchise that, of all the ones he managed, had an owner most passionate about winning. He chose the Charlie Finley's Oakland A's.

The combination of humorous self-deprecation and swagger that Dick always carried on and off the field came through when he heard he was to be enshrined in Cooperstown.

"I'm very humbled by it,” he said, “if I can ever be humbled, because you know me."

Author’s Note: Eric Aron contributed many insights and some writing to this biography. Warren Corbett contributed many, many insights.