Mitch Williams
| Mitch Williams | |||
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| Pitcher | |||
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Born: November 17, 1964 Santa Ana, California |
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| MLB debut | |||
| April 9, 1986, for the Texas Rangers | |||
| Last MLB appearance | |||
| May 10, 1997, for the Kansas City Royals | |||
| MLB statistics | |||
| Win–Loss record | 45–58 | ||
| Earned run average | 3.65 | ||
| Strikeouts | 660 | ||
| Saves | 192 | ||
| Teams | |||
| Career highlights and awards | |||
Mitchell Steven "Mitch" Williams (born November 17, 1964 in Santa Ana, California), nicknamed "Wild Thing", is a former relief pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for six teams from 1986 to 1997. He was also a studio analyst for the MLB Network from 2009 to 2014.
Williams, a left-hander with a high-90s fastball and major control issues, was largely effective, especially in the early part of his career earning 192 saves in his 11 seasons including a career high of 43 in 1993. He is best known for giving up a walk-off home run to Joe Carter of the Toronto Blue Jays in the sixth game of the 1993 World Series, which gave Toronto a World Series championship over the Phillies. Williams' career went into immediate and noticeable decline after this, though he played in parts of three more major league seasons.
Williams was drafted out of high school in West Linn, Oregon, in 1982, by the San Diego Padres. The Texas Rangers acquired him in 1985, and he made his major league debut for the Rangers in 1986. It was with the Rangers that Williams earned the nickname "Wild Thing" due in large part to his awkward delivery to the plate in which he would fall to the third base side of the mound during his follow through, and also because of issues he had with control. The Rangers traded him to the Chicago Cubs after the 1988 season.
When he joined the Cubs, Williams extravagant wind-up and release and his frequent wild pitches inspired Wrigley Field organists to play The Troggs' "Wild Thing" as he came out of the bullpen. A power reliever, he put his full weight behind every pitch, so that he dropped hard to the right, sometimes falling off the mound. He was often compared to film character Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn (played by Charlie Sheen) in the 1989 David S. Ward film Major League. In 1993, Williams started wearing the number 99 (he originally wore the number 28) on his jersey, the same number that Vaughn wore in the film. According to an interview on the The Dan Patrick Show on October 22, 2008, the number change had nothing to do with the Major League film. Williams said he had wanted the number 99 for years and years because of an admiration for the football player Mark Gastineau, who also wore number 99. Williams said that he did not change his number until 1993 because that was his first chance to do it.
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