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Yankees: Bernie Williams congratulates DJ LeMahieu on batting title with heartfelt statement

Adam Weinrib
Adam Weinrib

Yanks Go Yard

BOSTON - JULY 13: Bernie Williams of the American League waves to fans as he's introduced before the 1999 All -Star Home Game at Fenway Park on July 13,1999 in Boston, Massachusetts. The American League defeated the National League 4-1. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)

Yankees legend Bernie Williams tipped his cap to DJ LeMahieu, the first NYY batting champion since 1998.

Just because the Yankees were stuck playing a 60-game 2020 season does not mean their impressive individual accomplishments don’t matter.

Ask Bernie Williams, the iconic center fielder who, before Sunday, was the most recent Yankee to win a batting title, taking home the crown in his insane 1998 season (.339, before a .342 mark the next year, too).

DJ LeMahieu all but clinched his batting title on Saturday with a 4-for-5 day to vault him further past Tim Anderson of the White Sox, and even though it might be hard to reconcile the accomplishment in such a small sample size, Williams knows how difficult it is to be the very best at smacking the ball to all fields.

And just after Sunday’s game ended, Williams had some extremely nice things to say about his out-of-left-field heir apparent.

You know, we never really say the LeMahieu-Bernie comparison until this moment, but we’re kind of all about it.

Cool, calm, and collected under pressure. Always reliable in the sweatiest moments, postseason or otherwise. Runaway batting champions.

Yeah, we could get used to having a Bernie-esque figure back in our lives — and he didn’t stop at one tweet, by the way.

(The third tweet in the thread is just hashtags, but we’ll forgive you, Bern.)

It’s rare for a Yankees hitter to make music quite this sweet, but LeMahieu’s on-field accolades certainly evoke the glory days of Williams in center. Though the Hall of Fame neglected him, we can’t forget how outright dominant he was during the team’s most recent dynastic years.

An All-Star from 1997 to 2001. Hit over .320 four times in that six-year span. Brought the same casual intensity to every situation, in the field or at the dish.

And if you’ve earned a tweet thread like this from the silent assassin, you’ve done something right. Congrats, from one hitting machine to another.

Adam Weinrib

Adam Weinrib

Adam Weinrib is a Content Director on the FanSided network, and has been the co-editor at Yanks Go Yard for 6 years. He also co-hosts The Baseball Insiders Podcast thrice weekly, alongside FanSided MLB insider Robert Murray, as well as the Yanks Go Yard Podcast. Previously, he was a Senior Editor at 12up.com, and has been covering MLB and NFL for 10 years. He was also a headline and features contributor at ClickHole and Onion Sports, as well as the Associate Producer of the ESPN 30 for 30 film "Believeland". An avowed fan of the New York sports teams -- specifically the Yankees -- as well as the North Carolina Tar Heels, you can find Adam complaining mid-game on Twitter, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn if the game goes really poorly.