Friday, April 29, 2005

Thru Cub Eyes - Billy Williams

Every Friday we peek into Cub History by selecting one player to tell us how it was in his own words. Banks, Kessinger and Beckert have already been featured. These are excerpts from Carrie Muskat’s fine anthology Banks to Sandberg to Grace. Be sure to add this volume to your vast collection of fine Cub Literature.

It was a tough time. You go to different cities and they call you all kinds of names. Half the time you’d get a base hit, and they were pissed off because you got a base hit, and they called you “nigger” or “jigaboo.” You hear that -- you can’t help but hear it. You try to brush all that away from your mind. You don’t want anything to take away from what you were doing. Your goal is to play hard and be a good player, and you wash all this [stuff] away. I heard all this until I got to Triple-A.

The game hasn’t changed. You still got to catch it, you still got to throw it, you still got to hit it. Whether or not you’re Tampa Bay or the New York Yankees, or the Chicago Cubs, you could add one or two players and that’s all you need to win a pennant.

We never played [Doug[Glanville in center field. I knew what he could do because I’d seen him play, but he was always playing left field because we went out and got Brian McRae to play center field. But we wound up trading Glanville and now he’s an outstanding player. So this is how the game has changed.

I often tell them, your playing career goes by so fast. Give all you’ve got while you’re on the field. Don’t walk in the clubhouse and say if I coulda, woulda, shoulda. Try to leave it all out on the field. You’re only out there three and a half to four hours. Make sure it’s all done.

next week, Fergie Jenkins

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