He led the Red Sox into the playoffs twice, had managing stints in Toronto and Houston, and won more than 900 games as a dugout skipper.
Jimy Williams, the 1999 American League Manager of the Year for Boston who won 910 games over a dozen seasons that included stints with Toronto and Houston, died on Friday in Tarpon Springs, Fla. He was 80.
The Red Sox said his death, in a hospital, came after a brief, unspecified illness. He lived in nearby Palm Harbor, on Florida’s west coast about 25 miles from Tampa.
Williams was voted A.L. Manager of the Year after leading the Red Sox to their second straight playoff appearance. He had replaced Kevin Kennedy as Boston’s manager after the 1996 season.
The Red Sox won 78 games in Williams’s first season and then more than 90 in each of the next two. In 1998, Boston made the playoffs as a wild card team but was defeated by Cleveland in the A.L. division series. The next year, down 0-2 in the division series, again against Cleveland, the Red Sox rallied to win it 3-2. (Boston lost to the New York Yankees, 4-1, in the A.L. Championship Series.)
The Red Sox won 85 games in 2000, and Williams was fired in August 2001, with the team at 65-53. He was hired that fall by the Houston Astros, but after two winning seasons with them he was fired midseason in 2004 with the team at 44-44.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
