For the fans, the fourth game of the 1993 World Series was among the most exciting in baseball history. But umpire Charlie Williams, who had the plate, called it “the game from hell.”
Or so he thought as he was walking off the field.
“I didn’t like the game at all,” Williams recalled Monday at his Hyde Park home. “I was ticked off. I thought it was horrendous. The guys who worked the first three games had some decent pitching and I knew if the pitchers had normal control I would work a good game.”
But it wasn’t a normal game. The Toronto Blue Jays won 15-14. It was the most runs scored in a Series game, most runs by a losing team; longest game by time, 4 hours and 14 minutes; most batters, 101.
“The easiest game to work is when they’re throwing the ball in the strike zone,” Williams explained. “All you do is sit in a rocking chair.”
Williams, a 14-year veteran who has worked more than 2,000 National League games in addition to the playoffs and All-Star Games, admitted he was somewhat nervous going in. It was his first Series and his first Series game behind the plate.
What Williams didn’t know was it was also the first Series appearance for both starting pitchers, Tommy Greene of the Phillies and Todd Stottlemyre of the Blue Jays.
“They are both experienced pitchers,” Williams said. “It didn’t occur to me they would have the jitters. They were more nervous than I was. They were so erratic I couldn’t get any rhythm from either one. If one guy was throwing strikes, I possibly could have picked up the rhythm from him. But they were both all over the place.”
Pat Borders, the Toronto catcher, added to the difficulty. “He was moving around a lot,” Williams recalled. “I kept trying to get him to set up a lot quicker. He took too much time giving the signs.”
There were six walks in the first inning, two by Greene, four by Stottlemyre, who issued a record three consecutive passes. Generally, the total number of pitches thrown in a nine-inning game is 240 to 250. This also was a nine-inning game but the pitch count was 367.
I asked Williams how many pitches he missed.
“About eight,” he said. Then he laughed. “Maybe nine. They allow you one pitch an inning.”
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Who is “they?”
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Williams also conceded he made the wrong call in the bottom of the seventh. He ruled Darren Daulton was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, forcing in a run that enlarged the Phillies’ lead to 14-9.
“The pitch came in high,” Williams said. “I couldn’t tell if it hit him because Borders jumped up in front of me. But I saw Daulton shaking his hand as if the ball had hit him.
“Gaston (Toronto manager Cito), in his nonchalant way, comes out and says, `Charlie, are you sure that ball hit him? I wish you would ask for some help.’
“I told him, `Cito, you’re going to have to go with my decision. It’s my call and we live and die with it.’
“I wasn’t going to ask the umpire at third base. He’s 100 feet away.”
When the inning ended, as the Jays were coming to bat open the eighth, Gaston came out to the plate to inform Williams he was wrong; the television replay showed that the ball hit the nob of Daulton’s bat.
“I told him,” Williams said, ” `Cito, that situation is over with. What do you want me to do, start the inning over again?’ “
All’s well that ends well. Gaston was smiling at the finish. The Jays rallied from behind with six runs in the eighth.
I asked Williams if he had any other particular memories of that game.
“There was a little dialogue between me and Lenny Dykstra in the fifth inning, after he had already hit a home run and a double. A fastball was thrown on the outside part of the plate. I called it a strike. He thought it was a ball and he starts jawing with me.
“Normally, I take my mask off and I’d have called time and we would have had a nice little exchange. But I kept my mask on and finally I had to tell him to get back in the box. He was still mumbling when the next pitch comes in and, of course, you know what happened. He took it out of the ballpark, his second home run.
“When the game was over, I was going back to the umpires’ room-my wife, Diana, was waiting for me-Dykstra puts his arm around my shoulder and says, `We had a great time tonight, Charlie. See you tomorrow.’ “
I asked if he still thought it was a horrendous game?
“I’ve changed my mind,” Charlie Williams said. “I realize now it was a game that’s part of baseball history and will be remembered for a long time.”