When George Steinbrenner dumped $87.5 million on Bernie Williams to keep the switch-hitting center fielder in Pinstripes following the 1998 season, there were voices within the organization who were against it.
At that money, people demand perfection and Williams is the first person to tell you he is far from perfect on the baseball field. Still, when the coin gets to that level, the warts are noticed.
Williams didn’t hit homers like Sammy Sosa. Williams didn’t play center field like Ken Griffey, Jr. Hell, at his best, he was going to get passed up by Derek Jeter as The Best Yankee Player.
Now, with the Yankees stumbling through the AL East like a Second Avenue drunk at 4:30 on a Sunday morning, Williams is the No. 1, 2 and 3 reasons they have stayed close to the first-place Blue Jays.
Jeter is having another good year, but without Williams across the past two weeks, the Yankees would be a lot further back than the 1½ games they are going into tonight’s action against the Orioles at Yankee Stadium.
At this moment, Williams is the best hitter in the AL but only the second best in New York thanks to Mike Piazza and that will make interesting talk come the weekend.
Yet, Williams’ recent 28-for-55 (.509) or the fact that he was tied for second in the AL RBI race with 76 and on pace to post career highs in homers and RBIs has been lost in the Yankees’ up-and-down first three months.
“I would rather have it both ways,” said Williams who raised his average from .297 to .329 and was the main reason the Yankees didn’t do worse than 6-7 on a trip in which they made two trades and added David Justice to hit fifth behind Williams. And it wasn’t like the 13-game hit streak was stuffed with a dozen one-hit games since he had nine multi-hit games. “Have a good year and the team do good, that would be the ideal thing. There is no way you can be happy by having a good year and the team not doing well.”
With the pitching-poor Red Sox falling like a huge meteor through the division, the AL East will be a two-horse race between the Blue Jays and Yankees in the second half and many believe the Yankees’ pedigree gives them the edge.
After winning a batting title in 1998 when he hit .339 with 26 homers and 97 RBIs and batting .342 with 25 homers with a career-high 115 RBIs last year, Williams’ average is off while the homers (18) and RBIs are on the rise.
Has Williams finally developed a cleanup hitter’s mentality?
“It just sort of happened,” Williams said. “There had been stretches where I would think myself out of an at-bat by giving too much credit to the pitcher and things like that. I am in a stretch right now where I don’t care if I swing and miss. I know with the next swing I have a chance of connecting.”
He certainly has. In addition to being second in RBIs when play started yesterday, a day of rest for the road-weary Yankees, Williams was seventh in hits (100), fifth in total bases (183), fifth in extra base hits (43) and tied for eighth in runs scored (60). Most impressive was his .375 average after the sixth inning which was the fifth best in the league. And he was 11 homers away from his career-high 29 in 1996.
Instead of basking in the glow of what will likely be the best of his 10-year Yankee career, Williams wants the Yankees to return to their dominating ways. And the sooner the better.
“We have been on the losing end of too many close games,” Williams lamented. “We have battled our rear ends off and come close but we haven’t been able to pull it out. The only positive thing about it is that we aren’t 10 games behind.
“The attainable goal is still in reach. It’s not like we have played ourselves out of the race. We still have three months to get our stuff together. This is where the experience of being in those type of situations in the past is really going to help us. But you have to go out there and stop talking about it and start doing the job.”
Williams has done the job well. Now it’s time for his playmates to follow his lead.
