JBF Week: Bern baby Bern!

I don't believe I had a Bernie Williams jersey relic before, and now I have two as a result of some care packages from Jaybarkerfan.

I work in marketing. I get that a phrase like "Core Four" attached to a group of people helps to sell that product. In this case, the "Core Four" of the Yankees is commonly referred to a Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Any Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera.

It annoys me how Bernie is left out of this gimmick. Just because he wasn't on the 2009 title team, he wasn't one of the four main pieces of the 1995-2009 Yankees run? It was a fairly long time between the 2000 and 2009 titles. So long that Andy Pettitte left for another team and came back. Bernie was massively important to those championship teams in 1996 and 1998-2000. He led the AL in batting in 1998. He then hit .342 the next season. He hit 29, 21, 26, 25, and 30 HRs in each respective season from 96-00, and won Gold Gloves from '97-'00.

Not to mention his post-season heroics, including 1996 ALCS MVP, 22 HRs, and countless big hits.

Maybe he was not the flashiest CFer of his era, or even the best at any point in time, but he one was one of the steadiest and most consistent. As we now know, many of the OFers putting up big numbers at that time were juiced up, but Bernie remained amazingly consistent for a long time. Looking back, I certainly appreciate his reign in CF a lot more now than I did at the time.