Former manager Jimy Williams has passed away.
Jimy Williams, former manager of the Blue Jays, Red Sox, and Astros, has gone away at the age of eighty.
Jimy Williams, a former big league manager who led the Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox, and Houston Astros for parts of 12 seasons, died Friday, according to reports. Williams was eighty.
After a brief stint in the major leagues, Williams spent the majority of the 1970s as a lower league manager. He became Bobby Cox’s third base coach for the Toronto Blue Jays in the early 1980s, and he succeeded Cox as manager after Cox left the Blue Jays to return to the Atlanta Braves in 1986.
The Jays won in all three of Cox’s seasons as manager, including a 96-win season in 1987, but did not win the division. Williams was sacked after Toronto began 1989 with a 12-24 record. Cito Gaston replaced him as manager. In 1989, Toronto won the division for the fourth time in a row.
Williams rejoined Cox as the Braves’ third base coach in 1991, being on the losing end of his previous Jays team’s championship versus Atlanta in 1992 and being able to celebrate when the Braves won it all in 1996. Williams was hired as manager of the Boston Red Sox for the 1997 season, and he led the team to the playoffs as a Wild Card in 1998 and 1999.
He was sacked in the middle of the 2001 season, replaced on an interim basis by Joe Kerrigan and then permanently by Grady Little for the 2002 season. Little would eventually manage the Red Sox squad that won it all in 2004.
Williams was then hired to lead the Houston Astros during the 2002 season. After winning 84 and 87 games in 2002 and 2003, he was fired at the All-Star break in 2004, when the Astros were 44-44. He was succeeded by Phil Garner, who led the Astros to the NLCS in 2004 and the World Series in 2005. Williams later served as the bench coach for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2007 and 2008, before retiring.
