Nine years after his final game in uniform, Bernie Williams is hanging up his cleats. It took a long time for Bernie to come to grips with the fact that he was no longer able to handle Major League pitching, like a long time, but here we finally are.
The Yankees sort of nudged him out after the 2006 season but he felt he could still play, so he never officially retired, opting to wait extremely patiently by the phone for a team to call. Hopefully he waited a year—two, tops—and then forgot about this while touring and playing classical jazz guitar all over the place. The Yankees are holding Bernie Williams Day and retiring his number on May 24, so it makes sense that he should make his retirement official.He was a great player, so graceful out in centerfield or loping around the bases, and a legitimate power threat at the plate. He was incredibly soft-spoken and well-liked by basically everyone, but he had some flair to his game, too. Bernie would flip his bat, and spin out of slides into home plate all the time, well before showboating came to signify impending doom and unwritten rules became so ubiquitous in the way baseball was talked about. So maybe that's the real reason he's retiring after all these years, as a symbolic gesture to his bat-flipping brethren, who have also given up the practice..@bw51official will formally sign his retirement papers at a press conference on Friday at Yankee Stadium. pic.twitter.com/kX7KAXjlTZ
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) April 22, 2015