By taking over a ninth-place team and leading it to the pennant in his first year as a big-league manager in Boston, Dick Williams earned the reputation of being a turnaround artist that he built on later in Montreal and San Diego. By taking over an emerging powerhouse in Oakland and leading the Athletics to back-to-back World Series titles to start a dynasty in the 1970s, Williams became a Hall of Famer. Williams, one of only two managers ever to lead three teams to the World Series, died Thursday from a ruptured aortic aneurysm at a hospital near his home in Henderson, Nev., the Hall of Fame said. He was 82. With his brash style, mustache and public feuds with owner Charlie Finley, Williams was the ideal manager for the A's teams that won it all for him in 1972 and '73 and then again the following year after he resigned. "He came to us at a very good time in our development and certainly for me as a young player full of talent ... . We were young and needed to understand how to go about winning and take the final step to become a great team," Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson said. "He was very important in that. He demanded excellence." Read more: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6746798
