For Dick Williams, an A’s formula that worked

Tom FitzGerald writes that the ever-abrasive and confrontational Dick Williams’ 1990 autobiography, “No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Life of Hardball” was a joke and everybody in baseball got it. But for the Hall of Fame manager who guided Charlie Finley’s A’s to three straight AL West titles, including World Series championships in 1972 and 1973, it worked. Williams died Thursday at a hospital near his home in Henderson, Nevada, from a ruptured aortic aneurism. He was 82. Obituary: Chronicle.