Bernie Williams: Future is Cloudy

Joey's Take: With the outfield being set, at Hideki Matsui in left, Johnny Damon in center, and Bobby Abreu in right, and not to mention the 4th outfielder spot/backup won last season by rookie sensation Melky Cabrera, there is no room for an aging, 38-year-old Bernie Williams. Recently declining a spring invitation, his future with the team, a 17th season stint if he does return, looks very cloudy.

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TAMPA, Fla. -- The problem with some baseball careers is that they simply don't last long enough.
The career of Bernie Williams may be in its last act. Nobody associated with the New York Yankees wants to see this particular career come to close; not teammates, not the manager, not the fans, probably not even the media. The end of this career might be understandable, but that does not mean that anybody has to like the fact that this career is ending.

Even as you consider that the man is 38, and even when it could be generally agreed that the New York Yankees might need other, younger talents, there seems to be a certain unfairness to all of it. The good guys, the class acts, the ones that represent the best elements of their sport and their team, get no particular breaks from the aging process or from the pattern of constant change that characterizes the game.

The people who have watched and appreciated what these players have done and what they have meant to the game can only look on with dismay while this process occurs.

All of this was why on Sunday, in a Yankees camp in which the theme of organizational change in direction underlies the entire spring, Topic A was the one element that nobody really wanted to change -- Bernie Williams. He wasn't at Legends Field.

The Yankees have asked Williams to come to camp as a non-roster invitee. Williams has so far declined that invitation. That non-roster status would be a substantial comedown for a man who was at the core at one of this franchise's most successful eras, a man who has been with this team for 16 seasons, who has played every one of his 2,076 Major League games in the uniform of this team. And yet, if he made this team, as it is set up now, the largest role he could expect would be that of a bit player, a spot player, a fifth outfielder.