Mitch Williams (baseball) - Chicago Cubs

Chicago Cubs

It was with the Rangers that Williams earned the nickname Wild Thing. When he joined the Cubs, his 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 Dan Patrick radio show on October 22, 2008, the number change had nothing to do with the film Major League. 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 didn’t change his number until 1993 because that was his first chance to do it.

Cubs manager Don Zimmer said Williams "did everything 99 miles an hour," and teammate and close friend Mark Grace said "Mitch pitches like his hair's on fire." The New Yorker baseball reviewer Roger Angell chortled over his "scary, hilarious antics", saying "he flung the ball and then... flung himself after it, winding up with his back to home plate... peering over his left shoulder in case anyone accidentally made contact."

Williams has explained that his erratic pitching was a combination of poor control and his simply not knowing where the ball was supposed to go. He was very effective at pick-offs from first and second base due to his deceptive head-down preparatory stance.