The Curious Case of Bernabe Williams

Bernie Williams was right: he hadn't retired yet. The long and strange trip known as the end of Bernie William's career has taken an even stranger turn.  Williams, who last played in the majors in 2006 at the age of 37, decided to play winter ball in preparation for the World Baseball Classic. Well, Father Time had a different idea and Bernie went down with a quad strain only a few days into his comeback.  It would seem that, at Bernie's age, the comeback ended.  Bernie doesn't seem to think so, talking to Christian Red at The Daily News:

"I have as good a chance as anybody to make that team," he says. "A lot of good players out there, so it's gonna be hard to try and make that team. But I like my chances. They're probably as good as anybody else's." -- So is Williams' drive to make the WBC team his last baseball hurrah? A chance for him to bring his professional playing career to a more satisfying close before he embraces his musical career full time? The answer is not that simple. "What would be the logical next step? That's why the World Baseball Classic is so pivotal," says Williams. "To be really honest, if I play (for Puerto Rico) and I start getting those feelings back again, start getting the urge and feel good physically, it can open a whole world of possibilities for me. But right now, I'm just speculating on what could happen. It's not going to be until I play in that competition whether I'm going to be able to make those kind of decisions."

It is indeed "curious" to see these words coming from Bernie.  Bernie didn't exactly retire after the 2006 season.  The Yankees told him they didn't want to guarantee him a roster spot, so Brian Cashman offered Bernie a minor league contract. On the surface, this seemed like a slap in the face given Bernie's 16 years of service  in pinstripes.  In 2006, Bernie went into the season as a backup outfielder but wound up getting significant playing time due to an injury to Gary Sheffield.  He didn't post bad numbers, but he was a bit below league average with a .332 OBP, which was actually higher than his .321 OBP from 2005. In short, Bernie was a player in major decline with little defensive value approaching his 38th birthday.  The Yankees had an outfield built of Hideki Matsui, Bobby Abreu, Johnny Damon, and youngster Melky Cabrera.  If Bernie was going to have any role in the team, it would be in a supporting role only and probably require an injury to the main four outfielders. Bernie said no, which was surprising.  This was a guy who was on the verge of signing a deal with the hated Red Sox at the end of the 1998 season and came back to the Yankees, determined to make a deal.  Bernie wanted the legacy that comes with being a career Yankee. That's what makes his recent statements so odd.  When Bernie rejected the Yankees minor league offer, he didn't run out and sign with another team.  He probably had some options if he pursued them.  But he knew, if he went off and played a few years in a couple of different cities, some of the luster would wear off his Yankee legacy. That doesn't seem to be a consideration now, not when he's looking to "open a whole world of possibilities."  Maybe the bitterness of Cashman's offer has been festering a bit within Bernie, only to be confirmed by the rousing applause he received at the final game at Yankee Stadium.  Maybe now he truly believes that part of his career was taken away from him by the New York Yankees. There's only one problem: that was two years ago.  Bernie's best chance to prove he could still be productive was to show up at spring training and be productive.  Bernie chose not to do that, spending the last two years mostly out of contact with the Yankees and focusing on his music. He seems to at least kind of understand that:

"Being out for six months, you question if a guy's going to have the timing ready that you really need to be a major league baseball player," says Williams. "After two years, it's like, 'Dude, this guy might be starting from scratch. He's going to have to prove to us that he can play at this level.' So, I think at this point, I'm in that process of just trying to find out."

That's a bit of a change from "I have as good a chance as anybody to make that team."  It almost seems as if Bernie doesn't even know what he wants. I can't blame Bernie Williams for wanting to play baseball.  He's been doing it for most of his life.  It defined him, putting him in the public spotlight, earning him millions of dollars and placed the love of an entire city into his back pocket.  New York rallied around the soft-spoken gentlemen, a player who was never brash, never loud or confrontational, just the epitomy of grace and dignity. New Yorkers also understood that Bernie wasn't a natural baseball player.  Here was a man who could run from first to third as fast as anyone, yet he had difficulty stealing bases.  He could fly through the outfield with great speed, yet he could never get a good jump on the ball and routinely placed in the bottom half of the league defensively.  Bernie wasn't an instinctual player, relying heavily on his speed and hitting prowess to carry him through. It worked.  Bernie had a solid career with production similar to recent Hall inductee Jim Rice.  But that lack of instinct meant a quick downturn as the abilities faded.  It's unreasonable to think after two years out of the game at the advanced age of 40 that Bernie can make some kind of comeback.  I commend him for wanting to play, for not looking at it with dollar signs in his eyes like so many of today's athletes.  He wants to play baseball again because that's who he is. I appreciate that.  And I hope I'm wrong.