FORT MYERS – He looks exactly the same as the day he left, which means he looks the same as the day he arrived.
Bernie Williams stood long and tall in the batting cage at the Red Sox minor league complex yesterday, slapping out line drives as if he’d never been away. A prideful man who always moved with athletic grace, Williams still is a regal presence wrapped around a quiet manner. So quiet that when he and the Yankees could not agree on his abilities, he just walked away from baseball without saying goodbye or much of anything else, which frankly was in keeping with how he’d comported himself throughout his 16 years in New York.
Williams has been away for nearly three years now because the Yankees thought he was a has-been after a 2006 season in which he lost his job to Johnny Damon and couldn’t throw or seem to stay healthy. The odd part was that Williams never argued with the Yankees, but he also never agreed with them. He simply refused to accept a non-guaranteed minor league contract to come to spring training in 2007, staying home without ever announcing that he was through with baseball, which, as it has turns out, he wasn’t.
After two years spent mostly playing jazz guitar while working on a second CD due out in April, Bernie Williams is back in uniform, sporting the red and white of his native Puerto Rico as he labors for that island’s national team for the upcoming World Baseball Classic.
Why he is here is not simply about national pride. It is about last chances.
“I’m going to keep my mind open and consider certain options and hopefully have as much fun as I can,” Williams said when asked if his WBC appearance is an audition for a return to the big leagues at the age of 40. “I don’t have any special expectations, but I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for any options.
“I feel great. I played a little bit of winter ball, but I wasn’t really ready and ended up hurting myself. The last couple of months I trained in New York. Then I came here and started running, doing a little bit of hitting. (Today’s opening exhibition against the Twins) will be a better indication of how I feel once I start seeing some live pitching.”
For a time yesterday, Williams sought out such pitching among Red Sox minor league prospects, taking batting practice with them before joining his Puerto Rican teammates.
“I went down to face some left-handed pitchers,” he said. “I need to face as much live pitching as I can before the tournament so I can get more used to tracking the ball.”
Once tracking the ball was what Williams did best, whether with his bat or his glove. He did it so well he won four Gold Gloves, once hit .342 and played so well that the fields on which he was playing yesterday nearly became his home, a Yankee who nearly was a Red Sox.
“It feels very odd being here,” Williams said, smiling. “There was a time, probably 10 years ago, when I was very close to becoming a Red Sox as a free agent. It’s a bizarre feeling to be at their complex. Some of the grounds crew was trying to get me to sign some balls. I told them, ‘You guys are fraternizing with the enemy.’ ”
In 1998, Williams nearly went over the wall, agreeing to terms with the Sox to replace departed Mo Vaughn only to re-sign with New York at the 11th hour when George Steinbrenner matched the offer. Had he come to the Sox spring training complex 11 years ago a lot of things would have been different. New York would have signed Albert Belle, which would have been a disaster, and the Sox would not have gone after Damon.
History would have had to be re-written.
That is why Bernie Williams is here now. To re-write his ending before he becomes history for good.
