That Good, For That Long

Billy Williams played sixteen seasons in a Cubs uniform and did not see a single postseason game.

He was the most reliable hitter in the National League and it was not particularly close. From 1962 to 1970 he played 1,117 consecutive games, a streak that ended only because he asked Leo Durocher for a day off and Durocher agreed. At 32 he hit .322 with 42 home runs, 129 RBI, and led the league in hits, runs, and total bases. At 34 he won the batting title at .333 and led the league in slugging and total bases. Both of those Cubs teams finished second.

Then it was over. Chicago traded him to Oakland in October 1974 for Darold Knowles, Bob Locker, and a young second baseman named Manny Trillo. He turned 37 that summer, spent most of it as a designated hitter, and the A's won the West. His entire October consisted of three games against Boston in the 1975 ALCS. The Red Sox swept it. He went home.

The Hall of Fame plaque arrived in 1987 and it says nothing about any of this, because plaques do not measure the specific ache of being that good for that long in a city that could not build a winner around you. Sweet swinging Billy Williams hit 426 home runs and collected 2,711 hits and played three postseason games at the very end, for somebody else.