MLB.com recently sat down with Williams in his Spring Training office in Goodyear, Ariz., to discuss his life before baseball, the difficulty of trading popular players and why "rebuilding" can be a dirty word.
MLB.com: You began your career as an investment banker on Wall Street. Did you take anything from that career that has helped you in baseball?
Dick Williams: I think I took a lot of things. I feel real fortunate to have taken a nontraditional path into baseball. I really was not considering baseball as a career until my mid-30s, so I was very focused on investment banking and private equity, and as a result, I got exposure to a lot of different businesses and the way they did things.