Williams Is Simply Yankees’ Man of Hour

ATLANTA —  Bernie Williams has the look of greatness. So says Reggie Jackson, the New York Yankees’ special advisor.

There have been nights and days in this postseason when the center fielder of the Yankees also has the look of Reggie Jackson.

Mr. October?

Wait a minute, says Reggie Jackson.

“People have expected Bernie to become a great player for a few years and now Bernie seems comfortable with it and expects it of himself,” Jackson said.

“But you can’t brand a new Mr. October weekly. I mean, get in a hundred, two hundred (October) at bats first. It’s like that guy with the Braves . . . Andruw Dye, Andruw Jones, whatever the hell his name is.

“He hit two home runs in New York and I’m reading he’s the next Henry Aaron. Hell, he needs to hit about 750 more homers before he’s Henry Aaron. I mean, that’s an insult.”

Okay, so Bernie Williams isn’t Mr. October, but Jackson acknowledged that he has been stepping up, providing the Yankees with the big hit and big lift consistently, which is what you look for a Mr. October to do.

“What he did tonight was huge,” Jackson said.

What Williams did in the first inning of Game 3 of the World Series was intrude on the invincibility of a pitching staff that had allowed only two runs in five games and had restricted the Yankees to a .175 batting average in two.

Hitless in seven at bats in the Series after batting .474 as the most valuable player of the American League championship series, Williams drove a run scoring single to center off Tom Glavine to give the Yankees their first lead of the Series and some modest working room for David Cone, who would deliver six tough innings in an off the canvas, 5-2 victory that reduced the Braves’ lead in games to 2-1.

This game was still in doubt by that very score in the eighth, and a crowd of 51,843 was still doing that inane chop, when Williams stood up again, putting it away with a two run homer off Greg McMichael on a 1 and 0 fastball for his sixth home run of the postseason, tying a record shared by Ken Griffey Jr., Lenny Dykstra and Bob Robertson.

If he was watching on TV at home, Baltimore Oriole manager Davey Johnson probably shuddered.

Nothing his pitchers attempted against the switch hitting Williams in the five-game American League Championship Series worked, or as Johnson said at the time:

“We tried everything. It looked like we had an idea of how to pitch him, but you can’t make a mistake to him. He handles both sides of the plate, so I don’t really know how you can get him out. He’s a special player who has taken it to another level.”

John Smoltz and Greg Maddux got him out, but that doesn’t make Williams unique.

He carried the same approach against Glavine, looking to get a quality at bat and hit the ball hard. The Yankees, he said, weren’t deflated coming out of the Bronx 0-2. In fact, 15 or 20 minutes before the game “we were very pumped, looking forward to the challenge, not intimidated at all. Getting the first run was very important because we haven’t been scoring. We had to break the ice, especially on the road with this crowd.”

The Yankees are 6-0 on the road in the postseason. The formula?

”. . . decent starting pitching, getting to the bullpen with the lead, getting some big hits from Bernie.” said Cone.

Born in Puerto Rico four years before the 1972 death of that country’s immortal Roberto Clemente, the soft spoken Williams has been emerging as a big time player over each of the last three years.

He batted .305, hit 29 home runs and drove in 102 runs during the regular season, playing a center field once occupied by the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle with acrobatic brilliance.

But, said Jackson, he’s “really been a different player since the last week in August,” when manager Joe Torre, dissatisfied with what he described as Williams’ body language, had a private meeting and urged his center fielder and No. 3 hitter to become more aggressive, to take on a leadership role, to set the tone.

The result, first baseman Tino Martinez said, is that Bernie “seems to have found a new confidence level. He believes what others have believed, that he has the ability to be a superstar.”

Williams was a raw and inexperienced prospect coming out of Puerto Rico. Instinct has caught up with ability.

Torre compares his center fielder’s style and personality to “what I know of the quiet dignity of Arthur Ashe.”

Williams would like to be compared to Segovia. He is a student of classical guitar who was forced to fly to Puerto Rico in midseason when his young son was hospitalized with a respiratory problem.

The boy is now fine, and Williams said, “It was a reality check. It made me realize what the important things in life are.”

More important than being branded Mr. October.