How Much is Williams Worth to the Yankees?

Everybody wants Bernie Williams to be pure. It is the agent, Scott Boras, who has to come up a money grubber. The fans want it to be this way, so does George Steinbrenner.

But Boras is not the one who shoots for the moon here, no matter how much he talks. It is Bernie Williams. Sometimes in sports, the agent still works for the player, not the other way around. Boras is just doing what he is told, no matter how upsetting that is to everybody who wants Williams to be a sweeetheart in all matters.

You don’t have to like the way Boras plays the game, acting loudmouthed and insulted when his client is offered $7.5 million a year. That is Boras’ style, and he isn’t going to change. Negotiate with him and wear a helmet. But the one who digs in here is Bernie Williams.

Williams is a picture of grace at Yankee Stadium, on the field and off. We all know that. He acts the way we still want Yankees to act, and respects the uniform more than the owner ever has. But he wants his money now.

Neil O’Donnell left Pittsburgh and came here for the money and everybody is still screaming about that. Guys do it all the time. They don’t just want to get paid, they want to get overpaid. It all just gets more complicated when it is someone as popular as Williams.

He is 29 and has been in the Yankee organization since 1985 and if he plays his whole career here, he will retire the kind of great Yankee that Don Mattingly did. He has come on strong the last few years. Since 1994, Williams has gone from a salary of $225,000 to $5.25 million. It isn’t enough. Now he looks to double the $5.25 million.

It was 1994 when we first began to see all the possibilities with Williams, a late bloomer. He was at .289, with 12 home runs and 57 RBI when the season stopped in August. If the season played out, Williams would have been eligible for arbitration. The season did not play out. He lost out.

During the offseason, the Yankees threatened to renew him at $225,000, maybe give him a little bump to $250,000. After much anger from both sides, hard words all around, the Yankees offered $400,000 and Williams took it because he had nowhere to go. And has never forgotten being treated on the cheap.

In spring training, Buck Showalter sat down with him and asked him if he was all right with the contract. Showalter had known Williams since he was a kid, watched him come up through the system, knew how sensitive he was.

“Don’t worry,” Williams said. “I’ll get mine.”

In 1995, Williams hit .307 in 144 games (the season began late after the strike was finally settled), with 18 home runs and 82 RBI. Finally he was eligible for arbitration. The Yankees offered $2.55 million. A big number. Williams went for a bigger one at $3 million. There were people close to him who thought the Yankees’ offer was good enough to take, without even going through with a hearing. Some of them were still trying to talk him into it the day he was scheduled to go before arbitrator Ralph Berger.

“It’s not a bad deal,” someone said.

Williams, walking up Park Ave. at the time, stopped. He knew he couldn’t lose, no matter what happened. But he wanted a knockout.

“I want to win,” he said that day.

The arbitrator rolled over for him. Williams made that incredible jump from $400,000 to $3 million, and now here we are. Boras talks tough, so do Steinbrenner and general manager Bob Watson. The Yankees make sure to get the story out that they are talking to Brady Anderson’s people. Boras is supposed to be the bum, even though his clients respect him tremendously, are tremendously loyal to him, all the way down the line.

Everybody chooses up sides on Bernie Williams, who is supposed to be the foundation of the Yankees into the next century.

The Yankees say they don’t have to pay dumb just because the Cubs did it with Sammy Sosa and the Marlins did it with Gary Sheffield. Boras says they didn’t create the market, somebody else did. But Williams is moving up on his walk year, and now it is his turn. You wonder how all this would be going if he were a free agent from some other team. Steinbrenner has always been a lot sweeter on these guys when they have belonged to somebody else.

Do you pay Bernie Williams -- who has hit .300 three times, hit more than 20 homers twice, knocked in 100 runs twice -- as much as $10 million a year to stay with the Yankees five more years? Or do you continue to tear down the Yankee team that was in the ballpark the night of Game Six? If Williams goes, here are the people gone from 1996 already:

Wade Boggs, Charlie Hayes, Jim Leyritz, John Wetteland, Mariano Duncan, Cecil Fielder, Kenny Rogers, Tim Raines, Dwight Gooden, Jimmy Key and maybe Darryl Strawberry.

But losing Bernie Williams would be losing too much. He is the Yankees now, along with Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Paul O’Neill, Mariano Rivera, Tino Martinez. He is worth more to the Yankees than he would be to somebody else. The Yankees should present him an offer that averages out to $9 million a year. Give him $10 million a year at the back end. Put that on the table. If it isn’t enough, then move him.