from New York Post
By Mike Vaccaro
March 17, 2003
The more years that pass, the longer he patrols baseball's most famous patch of lawn, Bernie Williams grows ever mindful of his place within the social register of timeless Yankees. This wasn't always an easy truth to reconcile, and it wasn't always a legacy he willingly embraced. "I mean, think of the names you're talking about," Williams said. "When you're a kid just trying to make it in the big leagues, you don't want to hear about names like DiMaggio and Mantle, even if you do play the same position. I never wanted that kind of extra pressure on myself. There's enough pressure in this game already."
Slowly, Williams has come to appreciate the pull of his position. He's felt the steady adoration of a new generation of Yankees fans, reared on relentless victory. Their grandfathers cheered Joe D. Their fathers and their uncles keep Mickey Mantle's memory carefully pressed between the pages of their youth.
And they have Bernie.
"It's only recently that all of that makes sense," Williams said. "I guess I've had the advantage of playing my whole career for this one team, and the fact that we've been as successful as some of the great teams the other guys played on."
That's what he calls them, too. The Other Guys. The other transcendent Yankees who turned center field at Yankee Stadium into a plot of real estate that launched millions of adolescent baseball dreams.
That kind of talk used to make him uncomfortable, used to suffocate him, because he never saw himself as anything more than a working stiff. He didn't carry the natural aura of a rock star, the way the pin-up shortstop does. He didn't live a heavy metal life, living his life in bold-faced type, the way the loudmouth left-handed literati does.
"I've flown under the radar my whole career," Williams said. "I like it that way."
It has allowed him to survive portions of 12 years as a Yankee without lighting one public brushfire, without engaging in the slightest skirmish with the owner, without ever compromising the fans' unconditional affection.
Slowly, the Yankees clubhouse has become Williams' clubhouse, No. 51 operating out of his corner suite of lockers, clearing his throat when crisis demands it, binding ties when an oaf like David Wells tries to fray them, quietly assembling a career that should end up in Cooperstown.
Just like The Other Guys.
"Bernie has the kind of personality where you won't even know he's around most of the time if you aren't trying to search him out," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "Until he steps onto the field. Then, you know. Then, you never forget him. It's impossible to ignore a talent that large."
The numbers scream the same thing. All-time, his .392 on-base percentage ranks him ninth among center fielders with 5,000 plate appearances (Mantle is second, DiMaggio fifth). His .498 slugging percentage is ninth (Mantle and DiMaggio are 1-2). He enters this season with eight straight seasons of batting .300 or better; Tris Speaker (10) is the only center fielder since 1901 to have a longer streak.
And among all Yankees, ever, only Henry Louis Gehrig, at 12, tops that.
"I've been blessed," Williams said. "I've played on some very good teams."
It isn't that simple, though. Even Williams understands that. When he first showed up as a shy 22-year-old in July of 1991, the Yankees were a mess, their dignity lying in tatters, their prospects for prosperity dim at best, dire at worst. But in the midst of that despair, Williams sought out a soul mate who occupied the very same corner of the clubhouse he would inherit years later.
Don Mattingly taught Williams many lessons during his ongoing internship.
"But mostly," Williams said, "he taught me what it means to be a Yankee."
Yankees fans noticed. They understood. When Mattingly retired after the 1995 season, they bequeathed their unconditional devotion to his spiritual successor, and there is where it remains. His performance dictated that, to a degree. But so did something else, something Williams can sense every time he trots out to centerfield.
"I know people are always pointing out there," he said. "When they do, some of them are thinking about Joe DiMaggio. Some of them are thinking about Mickey Mantle. And, I guess, some of them are thinking about me."
Or, as Mantle and DiMaggio might call him: The Other Guy.
