Dick Williams' Crusty Cardboard Starpower

The only baseball card with an oatmeal stain?

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1984 Topps Dick Williams (#742) - Card of the Day

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Who was the first baseball player you saw in real life who left you starstruck?

For me, it was Wilford Brimley.

OK, not the actual Wilford Brimley, but the truest baseball equivalent to the crotchety characters Mr. Oatmeal played that 12-year-old me could have dreamed up.

Now, I’ve written before about how the glowing green “grass” at Riverfront Stadium and the pop of Dan Driessen’s glove made the first big impressions on me when I stepped into a big league stadium for the first time in June of 1984.

And how Dave Parker waved to my parents and me in our right-field seats, several times, during the game. And how Tony Gwynn at least glanced our way.

That’s all still true.

But Astroturf is not a player, and I didn’t really know who Driessen was at the time, not until I got home and did a little more research into the Big Red Machine. And the encounters with Parker and Gwynn came after all the pregame festivities.

I knew who lots of the then-current Reds players were, though, and several of the visiting Padres, too. So the stargazing icebreaker would come down to who I saw first.

Would it be Parker? Or Gwynn? Or Steve Garvey? Mario Soto? Tom Hume? Goose Gossage? Gary Redus?

As it turns out, it was…Dick Williams.

By that point in the season, the Padres were one of the fun surprises of the new season, along with the Cubs, Mets, Tigers (and Barbaro Garbey), Don Mattingly, Dwight Gooden, and Gwynn himself. And as the Padres rose to prominence and started to get some national play, Williams emerged as an “ancient wise one” figure who seemed as old as the hills and as curmudgeonly as a grizzled math teacher — at least to me.

So when Williams and Vern Rapp, the Reds’ uninspiring (again, to me) skipper, ran out their lineup cards to the umpires before the game began, it felt like Casey Stengel or Connie Mack or John McGraw had stepped onto the field and would be directing the day’s festivities.

My Reds seemed doomed in the presence of such a wisened and grouch-looking wizard. And they pretty much were, losing that contest, 5-2.

But even as Williams was sealing Cincy’s fate with his hand delivery to John McSherry before the game, I remember showing the elder statesman’s 1984 Topps card to my dad.

“He’s a great manager,” I said, without any knowledge of Williams’ past record in the game, which included a long playing career and two straight World Series titles as skipper of the 1970s Oakland A’s dynasty teams. “Even if he’s old…nearly dead, really.”

Dick Williams was 55 years old that day, which pretty much makes him a spring chicken in my current book of life.

I still think he looked older than that stated age, even on that Topps card (where he was just 54), and especially on the little gruff insert on the 1984 Fleer Padres Checklist card (#659):

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I’m sure Williams didn’t give a hang about how old he looked though, and especially not about how old some snot-nosed kid thought he looked. And if you don’t believe me about that, just consult your 1984 Williams cards and ask them what they think.

Get ready for a silent, icy stare.

And while you’re at it, you might wish them a happy birthday. Because Hall of Fame manager Richard Hirschfeld Williams, who passed away in 2011, was born 96 years ago today.

Mustard Treasure Hunt!

Gwynn wasn’t much of a household name when the 1984 season dawned, and his 1983 rookie cards had passed the previous year in pretty much quiet repose. That was already changing, big time, by the time I got my in-person view of the budding Mr. Padre.

And the on-field adventures of Gwynn, Mattingly, and Ryne Sandberg that summer set off a cardboard treasure hunt and helped build rookie card mania — and the modern hobby itself.

Read all about it right here.

And if you’re in the mood for some nuts-and-bolts insights on hitting from the man who made it an art and a science (with a foreword by Ted Williams), checkout Gwynn’s 1998 book, The Art of Hitting (affiliate link):

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