COMMENTARY : Bernie Williams Leads Yankees’ Comeback

One year late, from back in the pack, the Yankees give us a real September. Maybe it is too late to save them. But it does not change that they have come back and played real ball, when no one thought they could. It has to make you cheer, whether you like the new wild-card system or not. There are 16 games left, which makes it the shortest possible season. The Yankees and their fans will take it.

The Yankees were supposed to be finished after another deadbeat West coast trip, a team that was completely shot. It seemed half of baseball was between them and first place in the wild-card race. There had been a brief moment in August when the Yankees were fourgames behind the Red Sox and positioned to make a big move. Then all of a sudden the Yankees were 14 games behind in the American League East.

Only the Yankees did not quit. The Yankees got back to Yankee Stadium and got well. The Angels are in first place in the AL West. The Yankees swept them a couple of weeks ago. The Red Sox are still in first by a lot in the East. The Yankees swept them recently and beat them up pretty good.

Maybe the Yankees will fade again in the final two weeks. But for now, they are the same kind of trouble for the rest of the league they were a year ago. The way the Yankees are going right now, no one wants to play them in the playoffs, not even the Indians. If they are still playing this way in October, the first 100 games don’t matter.

Black Jack McDowell has been the best pitcher in the league for a month. George Steinbrenner has never had a tougher pitcher than McDowell. And it turns out that Paul O’Neill has not forgotten everything about last season, when he hit .361.

But the most exciting player of all, as the Yankees try to win September and make the playoffs, is Bernie Williams, the gifted young center fielder. His wife is expecting their third child in Puerto Rico any minute, and he will fly home as soon as she goes into labor. When he is gone, even for a couple of days, it will be a huge blow to Showalter’s Yankees. Because when the Yankee season seemed just about lost, Williams played as if everything were just beginning.

Williams has become a baseball star, which is what he was always supposed to be at Yankee Stadium. Since going to the No. 2 spot in the batting order on Aug. 4, hitting behind Wade Boggs, Williams has hit .375 and scored 23 runs.

Over a recent 16-game span, when the Yankees were 13-3 and climbed over everybody and got to first place in the wild-card race, Williams hit .450. He seemed to get two hits a night, one of them always being a big hit.

He was asked to explain it the other day before the Yankees hit the road and quietly said, “I can’t. All of a sudden, it’s just happening for me. I’m just hitting the ball hard.”

It is not just that he hits the ball hard. All of a sudden, Williams plays the game very hard. It was there for everybody to see in a play the other night, when he flattened Carlos Baerga. Williams was on first, Ruben Sierra hit a grounder to Baerga, who likes to tag the runner, then throw to first to complete the double play.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of a player,” Buck Showalter said. “You can’t make a guy do what Bernie did.”

Before the Yankees start a series, Showalter talks to his team about the other team’s tendencies. One of the things he highlighted before Yankees-Indians was about how Baerga prefers to tag the runner coming from first if there’s less than two outs, rather than throw to the shortstop and start the double play that way. Williams was looking for the tag one night last week, and got it. Baerga got knocked into the infield. He tried to throw out Ruben Sierra from his belly, threw wild, and Sierra ended up on second. Williams hit Carlos Baerga hard enough that he was not in the Indians lineup last night. Lenny Dykstra was the last New York center fielder to play this way.

“Bernie just smoked him,” Showalter said. “There’s a fire in him these days that I’ve never seen before, and it’s just been very exciting to see as a manager. He hasn’t just shown up this last month. He’s stepped up, in a way you always hope players will at this time of year.” Showalter paused and said, “What we’ve been doing lately could not have happened without him.”

Showalter was asked if moving into the No. 2 hole in the order, hitting behind Boggs, has helped Williams.

“I’ve got to be honest,” the manager said. “The way Bernie’s been hitting lately, it wouldn’t matter where I hit him. But I’ll tell you something: With the talent this young man has, with his ability to switch-hit, he’s not always going to be a No. 2 hitter. Someday, he’s going to be an ideal No. 3.”

Williams, out of Escuela Libre de Musica High School in San Juan, never has a lot to say. He is both shy and quiet. These days, he talks about working as hard as he ever has, especially with Yankees batting coach Rick Down, who is one of the best in the business. Williams has no real explanation for why he has suddenly exploded this way, and neither does his manager, who explodes into a laugh when asked if he and his center fielder have talked about the baseball Williams has played lately.

“The joke around here is that if I see any of my coaches bothering Bernie, they’re gone,” Showalter said. “I limit my conversations with him these days to how many centimeters Waleska (Williams’ wife) is dilated. The rest of the time, I just leave him alone.”

Williams does not turn 27 for a couple of weeks. He hit .289 last year, with 12 homers and 57 RBI in a strike-shortened season that lasted 113 games. He is better across the board this time. The batting average was .304 going into last night’s game, with 16 home runs and 77 RBI. If there were 162 games in the season, Williams would be on his way to 100 RBI for the first time. In the outfield, he still catches anything that stays in the park. There have been catches, at Yankee Stadium especially, that rank with ones the great Paul Blair made out there.

“As far as my approach is concerned, nothing is different,” Williams said.

But he is a different player. The Yankees, who saved something for the late innings, are a different team. Somehow, they have remembered who they were last season, the team they were supposed to be this season. If this had all started sooner, even the Red Sox would be starting to look around.