Williams will be on WIP each Wednesday morning of the baseball season - a role, Cataldi said, that easily could expand. He has signed up with Comcast SportsNet for 55 Phillies postgame shows and at least 14 "Daily News Live'' shows.
Already in guest roles, he has proven to be funny, self-deprecating and - in what must shock those who bought into his "Wild Thing" image - incredibly sharp-witted.
"I think one of the reasons I didn't go further as a coach is because of that moniker 'Wild Thing,' '' he said. "People meet me, they think they're meeting up with a blithering idiot."
"They think he's goofy,'' said John Kruk, his Phillies teammate and a frequent companion. "And sometimes that's pretty accurate."
Here's what else is: He is bemused, not bitter, about the personal purgatory that followed his infamous home run pitch to Joe Carter that abruptly ended the 1993 World Series.
Better yet, he blames no one for it. He has taken his abuse, taken his ridicule, survived through his postcareer infamy and emerged, somehow, on the other side, unaffected.
He has done what no other athlete has done in this town - or any town, really. Name another goat who has turned his situation so upside down. And in Philadelphia, no less.
Bill Buckner got out of Boston.
Gene Mauch certainly didn't enjoy his return trips to town.
Kruk recalled standing next to Mauch during one of those events in which the Phillies celebrated their past.
"He was in the tunnel chain-smoking, waiting, and when his name was about to be called he said, 'Oh, here we go.' " Kruk said. "I said, 'No way, man, that was so long ago, ancient history, '64 or something.'
"But he knew. He absolutely got booed, and I felt so bad for him."
