No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Life of Hardball

There are many in baseball who will question whether Williams ever was Mr. Nice Guy, for he stepped on a great many toes in his 20-year managerial career. Yet he will always be acknowledged as a winner in both leagues with great teams like the Oakland A’s of the early ’70s and awful ones as well, like the Seattle Mariners of the mid-’80s. Because, as he notes here, he is a battler and disdains players who are not, he feels out of step with today’s pampered, moody, overpaid athletes. The outspoken Williams, writing with freelancer Plaschke, even blasts certain owners, rare in a baseball autobiography: Tom Yawkey, Charley Finley, Ray and Joan Kroc, among others. But he has heroes, too, like Carl Yastrzemski, Reggie Jackson and Goose Gossage, his type of stars.