CHICAGO
Nearly 60 years later, Billy Williams can still remember the make and model of the car. It was a Plymouth Fury — always a Plymouth Fury — and on that particular day in 1959, it was pulling up a driveway in rural Whistler, Alabama. The car sat long and low, like a big ole slab on wheels, and as it rolled toward the house, Williams knew exactly what it meant: Buck O’Neil was here to see him.
“I saw him driving up,” Williams says. “And I said, ‘Hell, I’m in trouble now.’ ”
It was the summer time, and Williams, a future Hall of Fame outfielder who would play 18 seasons with the Chicago Cubs, had gone AWOL from his minor-league team in San Antonio.