No call for Bronx cheer with this Bomber

He's the Unbooable Man, right? I mean, who could lower himself or herself to boo Bernie Williams, the Mother Teresa of baseball?

Stupid me. How could I forget? He is a Yankee.

``Oh, sure," he says, ``I've heard it, especially back around '98. I was a free agent, and I had contemplated the possibility of going to the Red Sox. The next year, I came to Boston and they were calling me a `traitor,' and I had never even played for them."

Bernie with the Sawx? That would have been nice, but it also would have been unnatural and just plain wrong. ``Bernie is one of those guys who should play here," says Derek Jeter, speaking from the Yankees clubhouse. ``He shouldn't play anywhere else."

Don't worry; he won't. Now closing in on game No. 2,000 as a Yankee (last night was 1,984), Williams is a certified Yankee lifer, and one with some shelf life, too. In Game No. 1,984 he was even back in center field, as Joe Torre gave Johnny Damon half a night off by writing him in as the DH.

Given the fact that Williams's 2006 status was greatly in doubt throughout the 2005 season (when a lucrative long-term contract was expiring), he must have a measure of satisfaction that, when Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui each sustained wrist injuries, good ol' Bernie was available to help the cause, just as he has since 1991.

``I think that has, in some ways, been the story of my career," he muses. ``It does bring me satisfaction to know that they still have confidence in me. That's the most important thing to me, that they aren't looking elsewhere. They're still letting me go out there and do my thing."

Whether Williams was ever a great player may be a matter of semantics, but the least someone can say about the prime-of-life Bernie Williams was that he was eminently reliable. He was a switch hitter who could hit for both average (eight consecutive years of .300-plus averages, ranging from .305 to .342) and power (a six-year over-.500 slugging percentage, ranging from .522 to .575, plus five 100-RBI seasons), and who augmented his offense with four Gold Gloves. In his declining years, it has become fashionable to pick on him for his diminishing range and his notoriously weak arm, but in the day Williams was a defensive force.

But the numbers, as impressive as they are, do not define Bernie Williams. When someone plays as long as he has, there are no secrets. If there were reasons for opponents to snicker, we would have heard about them. If there were whispers emanating from the Yankee clubhouse that Bernie is not what he appears to be, we would have heard about them. The truth is this: there are none. Just by being himself, and by carrying himself the way he has for these 15-plus seasons, Williams has emerged with one of baseball's most pristine images.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to report that there are no flies on Bernie Williams. If he weren't wearing that uniform, there wouldn't be any conceivable reason for anyone to boo him.

``Class. Respect. A burning desire to do well." That's the way Damon saw Williams during the many years he was an opponent. It kind of goes without saying that Bernie has always shown the maximum amount of respect for the game.

``I've never seen him jog to first on a ground ball," says Damon.

Nor has anyone else.

Williams was no phenom. He was just an unpolished prospect from Puerto Rico who made himself into a terrific ballplayer. When he was first establishing himself as a Yankee regular in the '90s, the phrase you kept hearing about him was ``he lacks good baseball instincts." That may very well be the case today. But despite lacking those ``baseball instincts," Williams has lashed out more than 2,200 hits, with 750 of them for extra bases. Despite lacking those ``baseball instincts," he somehow managed to earn those Gold Gloves. Baseball instincts or no baseball instincts, he's been a very valuable player for the Yankees.

He's very often been at his best when it counts the most. Williams is the all-time postseason leader in home runs (22), runs (83), and runs batted in (80). In 11 postseasons, he has failed to hit at least one home run only in 1997 and 2005. He has had some transcendent postseasons. The Yankees may have lost the 2003 World Series, but it had nothing to do with Williams, who hit .400 (10 for 25) with two homers, five RBIs, and five runs.

As you might expect, his name is sprinkled all over the Yankee regular-season career batting lists, and it does matter to him, or, at least, it will. ``Right now," he says, ``everything's happening very fast. It may sound crazy, but I have other things to worry about, like trying to help the team win.

``When it's over, I'll be able to reflect. I've been a Yankee a long time, and I've seen a lot of people come and go. I've never been a superstar, but I think I've been a solid player," he said. The Yankees have a knack of acquiring talent from the outside, so I feel very proud of the fact that I've been with them as long as I have."

What about '06? ``The question was whether or not I wanted to play at all," he explains, ``not whether I'd go somewhere else."

``I told you guys he wasn't going anywhere," says Jeter.

He re-upped in 2006 (for considerably less than the $12 million-plus he'd been earning for six years), and when the big guns went down, guess who was there for Torre, ready to do whatever he could for the Yankee cause? Good ol' No. 51; that's who.

It is the class act against which all class acts will be measured for a long time. Admit it. Bernie Williams almost takes all the fun out of hating the Yankees. One of these days Red Sox fans are going to do the right thing and give him a Standing O.