Former SF Giants star to have cancer surgery

Matt Williams was diagnosed with colon cancer and the Padres third base coach will be leaving the team indefinitely.

One of the most beloved SF Giants of all time is facing his toughest battle yet. Matt Williams, the franchise's fifth-leading home run hitter, will have surgery Friday to remove a cancerous growth on his colon.

San Diego Padres manager and former Giants teammate Bob Melvin made the announcement Wednesday, saying that Williams would be away from the team indefinitely after participating in Opening Day events Thursday.

Padres third-base coach Matt Williams has colon cancer, manager Bob Melvin said. He’ll be with the team on Opening Day, but then he’ll go through a leave of absence. He has the full support of the team, Melvin said, calling him one of the toughest people he has ever met.

— Alden González (@Alden_Gonzalez) March 29, 2023

"He might be the toughest guy I've ever come across in baseball," Melvin told reporters. "We know that he's gonna give this the fiercest effort of his life, and he's going to beat it."

Williams said he felt "as good as I've felt in 20 years," and only discovered the cancer after a routine physical showed that his red blood cell count was unusually low. He said that the subsequent scan showed that the cancer hadn't yet spread anywhere else, so there's hope that doctors caught the issue early.

The National League's home run leader in 1994 and RBI leader in 1990, Williams was a cornerstone for the Giants for nearly a decade, making four All-Star teams and winning three Silver Slugger awards and three Gold Gloves in a Giants uniform. Williams' glove was so good that he probably could have played shortstop for the team, were it not for the presence of the late Jose Uribe.

He also occasionally showed off a fantastic Babe Ruth impression.

Melvin played with Williams in San Francisco in 1987 and 1988, and subsequently added him to his coaching staff, first in Oakland and then in San Diego. In between, Williams spent two years managing the Kia Tigers of the KBO League in South Korea. Before that, he spent two years managing the Washington Nationals, winning Manager of the Year in 2014.

It's the second year in a row that medical issues are keeping Williams out to start the season. Last year, Williams had hip replacement surgery in the spring. While he returned to the dugout fairly quickly, he was replaced by former St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Shildt as third base coach until, as Melvin said, he could "get out of the way of 115 mile an hour line drives."

Shildt will also fill in this year as interim third base coach. His only connection to the Giants is an ugly confrontation with coach Antoan Richardson last April, which involved profanity and what Richardson felt were "undertones of racism."

Mike Shildt's statement from the joint media session alongside Antoan Richardson pic.twitter.com/Ajzn7Lg17B

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SF Giants and Padres fans alike will be pulling for Williams. The only consolation for Williams is that if his cancer treatment gets more serious, the hair loss won't affect him, since he's been bald since his twenties.

Still, the combination of toughness and playfulness Williams showed for years as a Giant should help him fight cancer. Dusty Baker once called Williams "one of the finest young men I've ever known." He's no longer young, but we've never heard anything to suggest he's not still a fine man. Get well soon, Matty.