Williams Still Wild

When he heard Mitch Williams would be coaching him, Atlantic City Surf pitcher Andy High couldn’t believe his ears.

“Wild Thing?” That Mitch Williams?

“I thought it was a joke,” High said.

It wasn’t.

Mitch Williams is back in baseball, nearly eight years after being run out of Philadelphia for surrendering Joe Carter’s World Series-winning homer in Game 6 in 1993.

This time, Williams is a pitching coach--but he’s no less wild. He’s been thrown out of four games this season for arguing with umpires. He also hit a batter with a pitch when he was an emergency reliever on the injury-depleted roster.

The 36-year-old Williams, an unorthodox lefty whose 11-year major league career was marked by control problems, was hired in January by the team in the unaffiliated Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.

He’s an unlikely choice to help pitchers stay in control, but he says he’s on a mission to return to the top level of the sport as a coach.

“I’d like to get back into the majors, and you’ve got to start somewhere. This is as good a place as any,” he said.

There was a time when it wouldn’t even have been safe.

That was in 1993, when Williams saved a team-record 43 games to help lead the Phillies to the Series. The saves were all but forgotten when Carter hit a three-run homer off him in the ninth inning.

The shot gave the Blue Jays an 8-6 victory and a World Series championship. All Williams got was the “goat” label, the waiver wire and a few death threats.

He hung up his spikes--for good, he thought--after an unsuccessful 1997 comeback with the Texas Rangers. Then he spent nearly four years tending bar at his father-in-law’s bowling alley.

Tired of watching baseball on TV, he began asking around last year about coaching somewhere. A talk with former Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw led him to Atlantic City, an hour’s drive from Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.

Surf general manager Mario Perrucci offered him the $3,000-a-month job and Williams took it.

Now he endures the little indignities of a former major leaguer down on his luck: the pay cut, the half-empty stadiums, the long bus rides to baseball backwaters like Nashua, N.H., Bridgeport, Conn., and Newark.

“He doesn’t care about pride. He’s having a good time,” said Surf manager Tommy Helms, a former Cincinnati Reds’ coach.

Helms is happy to have him. So are the Surf’s pitchers.

“He teaches us to be aggressive,” said Sam Ali, a righthander from Everett, Mass. “He says, ‘Don’t have any fear. Go at the batter. Don’t go to the mound with fear.’

“He’s the most intense coach I’ve ever had. He flips out when something bad happens.”

Despite Williams’ temper, Helms says he’s worth the trouble.

For one thing, the Surf’s ERA is down, from 4.85 last year to about 4.13 this season, and attendance is up.

The Surf, which have struggled to sell tickets to the 5,900-seat stadium since beginning play in 1998, are averaging 1,841 fans a game, up 26 percent from last year.

“I know he’s not making a lot of money here, but he’s doing a hell of a job,” Helms said before a recent game, sitting in a dugout and spitting out chewing tobacco. “He knows about pitching, he brings enthusiasm and he hasn’t been out of the game long, so he can relate to the players.

“He still gets excited about things, and that’s good for this league. The big thing is he wants to win.”

Williams is pragmatic about being where he is.

“If I were doing it for the money, that would be one thing. I’m doing it because I know where I’m at and where I want to be. Anyone coaching or managing in this league isn’t doing it for the paycheck, they’re doing it for love of the game and wanting to move up.”

He says he has no desire to pitch.

In fact, when asked before the season what could get him back on the mound, he replied: “Zero possibility, unless there was a bus wreck and all of the pitchers perished.”

The bus wreck never happened, but Williams has returned to the mound twice when Helms needed help, beaning a batter in his second appearance. He’s also pinch-hit three times.

Williams has been penciled in for his first start July 4 against the Bridgeport Bluefish. But he says that’s only to help the Surf. He’d rather focus on coaching.

“He coaches the way he pitches,” Helms said. “Enthusiasm, I call it. I think he has a future in coaching.”