Frank Williams, 50: Pitched For Tigers, Giants, Reds
Bill Schenley
Photo:
http://media.canada.com/3ca29868-a2b8-4cc7-ae56-6e8c67b32770/frankwilliams_082107.jpg
FROM: The Victoria Times Colonist ~
By Richard Watt
Frank Williams, a former major-league baseball pitcher
who ended up on the streets in Victoria, has died. He
was 50.
Rev. Al Tysick of the Pandora Avenue shelter
Our Place said Williams had a heart attack about two
weeks ago, went into a coma and never came out.
He died last Friday.
Williams's life reads like a Hollywood fantasy. He was
an orphan who grew up in foster homes in Seattle, but
he made it to baseball's major leagues, pitching for the
San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati
Reds between 1984 and 1989. Over six seasons, he
pitched 471.7 innings, had a 24-14 won-loss record with
eight saves and an earned-run average of 3.00.
He earned $442,500 in 1988 and $425,000 in 1989. By
the time he died last week, all that money was gone. He
spent his last days bouncing around Victoria shelters
and detox centres, a street-level alcoholic.
It was a car crash in 1989 that ended Williams's playing
days. He walked away from his wife and two kids and
ended up in Victoria, near the Vancouver Island First
Nation bands that reached out to him when he played in
San Francisco in the early 1980s. Prior to that, Williams
did not know he had First Nations roots.
According to Tysick, First Nations family members are
the only ones who came forward at the end. Williams's
relatives from Port Alberni are now preparing a funeral
service.
Williams was well-known in Victoria baseball circles.
John Turcotte, former president of the Victoria Mavericks,
remembers a man showing up to try out for the team in
the early 1990s. He had a $20 glove, no cleats and a vinyl
tote bag bearing the Cincinnati Reds logo, and he claimed
his last team was the Detroit Tigers.
Turcotte, who was catching that day, said a 19-year-old
batter hit the stranger's first pitch right over the mound
to centre field. The pitcher took off his glove, threw it
to the ground in disgust and pitched again.
The next pitch flew over Turcotte's glove and smashed
into his chest. Later, Turcotte sneaked a look at the
pitcher's Reds jacket and saw the name "Frank
Williams," a number and the major-league label. Years
later, Williams would refer to his time with the
Mavericks as his "comeback."
But alcoholism and life on the street took its toll.
"Every time you saw him it just got worse and worse,"
said Brad Norris-Jones, owner of MVP Sports
Collectibles on Fort Street.
For the past few years, Williams would entertain
listeners at the store with tales about the major
leagues and autograph baseball cards.
"The store was kind of a comfort zone for him,"
Norris-Jones said. "The stories just poured out of
him."
After news of his fate spread on the Internet, collectors
in the U.S. sent boxes of baseball cards and
memorabilia to the store for Williams to sign in
exchange for money.
The people at MVP acted as an unofficial keeper of
Williams's identity. His chaotic life on the streets meant
he was always losing his wallet. The store kept a stack
of Williams baseball cards on hand. He would stop
and pick one up whenever he needed identification.
"It's a sad day but I guess we could all see how it was
going," Norris-Jones said yesterday.
---
1985 Donruss (#323) baseball card:
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/pics/frank_williams_autograph.jpg
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Williams Goes from Pro Baseball to the Streets
FROM: The Victoria Times-Colonist ~
Richard Watts
VICTORIA
When Frank Williams loses his wallet - to theft, in
a fight or any other mishap in a life now lived at
shelters and detox centres - he replaces his ID with
a baseball card.
The people at Victoria's M.V.P. Sports
Collectibles keep themselves well stocked with
the baseball cards from Williams's six-year career
in Major League Baseball. And they do it because
they know Williams will need them from time to time.
"They know me in there at M.V.P. I like to go in
there and talk baseball," said the 49-year-old in
a recent interview.
Williams's life journey is breathtaking for its
extreme highs and equally extreme lows.
He began life as an orphan abandoned in Seattle,
grew up in foster homes and made it all the way to
the top of professional baseball. He pitched
a respectable six years with the San Francisco
Giants, the Cincinnati Reds and the Detroit Tigers.
And then it all disappeared in a bad marriage,
alcoholism and a horrific car crash.
He ended up on Vancouver Island, home of the
native bands that reached out to him in the early
1980s when he was playing in San Francisco.
Prior to that, Williams had not even known he
was native, but after a whirlwind of feasts and
potlatches he sure did.
Williams still claims an address near his First
Nations family in Port Alberni, B.C. In Victoria,
he stays at homeless shelter, broken up with nights
at a detox centre (just for the bed, not the program,
Williams insists). These stays are just temporary
arrangements, he says, while he works his job
setting dynamite for a blasting company.
"I can't sit around and do nothing. I fall back into
hanging around with the wrong people and drinking,"
he said.
According to him, Williams doesn't need to work as
he earns $120,000 US a year in baseball pension
money. But he admits most of his money went in his
divorce and these days he sees little.
According to the Baseball Almanac website, his
best-paid year back in 1986 earned him $442,500 US.
And according to various sources, a player with
a career the length of Williams's should expect to live
more comfortably than at a shelter.
Williams says he has no regrets about any of it. "I'm
still breathing."
Williams finished with a 24-14 record as a relief
pitcher, with a 3.00 ERA and eight saves.
For six glorious years, 1984 to 1989, and three teams,
Williams lived as most men only dream, with nothing
but money, glory and lots and lots of women.
"It was high-class living, high-class everything. You were
treated the best in life. It's the best you could ever look
for," said Williams.
He played for the famous Sparky Anderson, manager of
the Detroit Tigers, and for the disgraced Pete Rose of
Cincinnati, now stripped of all baseball honours over his
gambling. During his Cincinnati years, as a young
member of the bullpen, Williams said he even placed bets
for Rose.
And after, when Williams was traded to Detroit and
Rose had been exposed, Anderson told him, "You
know, Pete's my boy" and then proceeded to play him
game after game after game. Before the season was
over, his arm was "blown out."
Williams sometimes wonders if those non-stop playing
days in Detroit weren't some kind of payback over what
happened to Rose.
And he also wonders if Rose didn't trade him in the
first place out of jealousy. The manager's wife and
her friends would sometimes talk the young pitcher
into taking them clubbing.
At the end of 1989 came a horrific car crash when his
then-wife drove their car into a tree. Williams wasn't
wearing a seat belt, injured his neck and sheared off
half his face. The New York Yankees took him on and
gave him a year to recover.
But it was over.
According to Williams, he needed to get away and he
made his way to Vancouver Island, leaving behind,
two kids, an ex-wife and everything he owned. He
was followed by his twin brother, Francis, raised in
the same foster family.
His brother's death, in a fire in an Esquimalt, B.C.,
rooming house in 2004, is the only thing that makes
Williams really sad. He wonders if he could have
saved him.
But he also enjoyed some success playing amateur
baseball in the early 1990s, winning a B.C.
championship with the Victoria Mavericks. He calls
it his "comeback."
And there are all the other people around Victoria who
know Williams, know who he is, and love to hear his
locker-room tales from his days in the majors.
Brad Norris-Jones, owner of M.V.P. Sports
Collectibles, says most people in Victoria wouldn't
give Williams a second glance on the street.
But how many of them can resort to a collectible
baseball card when they need ID, asks Norris-Jones.
"How many guys can do that?"
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Stats: http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/willifr01.shtml
Thanks to Tim Copeland from SABR for the obit.