Jerome Williams sat in the same dugout on Monday more than a decade after his storied career at Waipahu High School.
In order to be sure it was the same park, Williams leaned forward to look behind the fence surrounding home plate.
“Still get, yup, still get the three bleachers over there,” he said.
The tiny blue rows of seats didn’t come close to handling the crowds that came to see Williams pitch.
And those were just the scouts.
More than 50 are believed to have attended different games pitched by Williams, who was drafted 39th overall in 1999 by the San Francisco Giants.
The sixth-highest draft pick ever from a local high school, Williams made his major league debut at age 21.
That same year, he helped pitch the Giants to a division title and made a start in the divisional series against the Florida Marlins.
Things couldn’t seem to be going any better.
“I was on top of the world,” Williams said. “I had anything and everything I wanted. Shoot, I was 21 in the big leagues and I thought nobody could take my spot …
“Then somebody did.”
FIVE OTHER pro teams involving multiple minor-league stints later, Williams found himself playing in Puerto Rico.
Two years after that, he was wearing the jersey of the Uni-President Lions in Taiwan, playing in a league with a whopping four teams.
Although he had rediscovered a fastball he said he could get into the mid-90s, it was still a struggle to get people out.
“They slap the ball everywhere, I mean, they’re all like Ichiro,” Williams said. “You throw a fastball inside and all they do is inside-out the ball and I’m like, I can’t get these guys out.”
It was something he planned on getting used to. For Williams, it wasn’t about getting back to playing major league baseball.
His goal was to make it to either Korea or Japan.
“From that point on I told myself I’m not going to play in the states anymore,” he said. “I felt like I was black-balled, people were knocking me for my weight again, which I had already taken care of.
“I believed they weren’t looking at how I pitched or my talent but just at me, so I told myself I’d finish my career overseas.”
WILLIAMS DIDN’T receive an offer to return to Taiwan this year.
With a wife and three kids to support, he had to somehow find a way back in the states.
“(My wife) told me, ‘Hey, without baseball you’ll amount to nothing,’ which is true,” he said. “I’ve never had a 9 to 5 (job), baseball is all I have. I never went to college, never had any college offers or nothing, so it’s true, this is all I know.”
The Los Angeles Angels took a chance on Williams, signing him as a free agent in June. After posting a 7-2 record with Triple-A affiliate Salt Lake City, Williams pitched in the majors for the first time in four years in August. Four days later, he picked up his first win exactly 2,156 days after his last one with the Chicago Cubs.
“With second chances in life you want to make it right,” he said. “Fortunately, I got a chance to do it right again.”
WILLIAMS RETURNED to Hawaii for the first time in six years on Thanksgiving Day.
On Monday, decked head-to-toe in bright red Angels gear, Williams worked out with the Waipahu junior varsity team.
Instead of giving the usual motivational speech, Williams wanted to get on the field and work with the kids. He spent a lot of time at shortstop, helping the team’s starter, Justin Padilla, giving him pointers on everything from fielding grounders to turning double plays.
“I had his father as coach and he’d always tell us stories about what (Jerome) did to get this far,” Padilla said. “It’s inspirational for everyone because it gives us motivation to know we can go far, just like him.”
Williams leaves today for California, where he will spend the offseason working out. He’s up for salary arbitration and is still waiting for a contract to pitch in the majors again next year.
“I want everybody to look at me and not think this guy is a flash in the pan,” Williams said. “I want to have a career where people say he worked hard at it, was out of baseball, came back, and was an established player.”
