I didnt see this posted yet, so I had to throw it up. Im a youngin around these parts (I grew up with the Bash brothers, Rickey, and the split finger fast ball) but to some of the Oakland originals, they will remember Dick Williams as the skipper who guided the band of misfits known as the Swinging A's to 2 of their 3 championships in the early 70's. And its official, he is going to the hall with an A's hat!!!!

Williams, who won the World Series twice as manager of the A's and will go in wearing an Oakland cap, teamed up with Gossage in 1984, as the Padres won the first National League pennant in franchise history, but lost a five-game World Series to the Tigers.

Williams' wife, Norma, answering the phone on Tuesday at their Las Vegas home, said Williams had already spoken to Gossage, and that her husband "was just as giddy as the day he got into the Hall of Fame."

"They just acted like two crazy little people," she said.

Williams was one of five managers and executives elected last month by separate, newly formed Veterans Committees...

Richard Hirschfeld Williams (born May 7, 1929 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a former left fielder, third baseman, manager, coach and front office consultant in Major League Baseball. Known especially as a hard-driving, sharp-tongued manager from 1967-69 and 1971-88, he led teams to three American League pennants, one National League pennant, and two World Series triumphs. He is one of seven 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 remains the only manager in history to lead four teams to seasons of 90 or more wins. On December 3, 2007 Williams was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee. He will be formally inducted on July 27, 2008.

After spending 1970 as the third-base coach of the Montreal Expos, 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 — but his players hated him for his penny-pinching and constant meddling in the team's affairs. (Finley changed managers ten times in his first decade, 1961-70, as team owner.)

Inheriting a second-place team from predecessor John McNamara, Williams promptly directed the A's to 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" would begin. 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; 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 and led the league in home runs, shutouts and saves. They defeated the Tigers in a bitterly fought ALCS, and found themselves facing "the Big Red Machine" in the World Series. The Cincinnati Reds were 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 title for the A's (and the franchise's first World Series championship since 1930, when the club played in Philadelphia).

In 1973, with Williams back for an unprecedented (for Finley) third straight campaign, the A's again coasted to their division title, then defeated Baltimore in the ALCS and the NL champ New York Mets in the World Series — each hard-fought series going the limit. Oakland won its second straight world title, the first repeat champions since the New York Yankees of 1961-62. 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 '73 World Series, Williams resigned. George Steinbrenner, in his first season as owner of the Yankees, immediately signed Williams as his manager. But Finley protested that Williams owed Oakland the final year of his contract and could not manage anywhere else. (Steinbrenner then hired Bill Virdon.)