Baseball Legend Bernie Williams Says Yankees Have the 'Opportunity to Do Something Special This Year' After 'Disappointing' 2023 Season

Once a Yankee, always a Yankee!

MLB legend Bernie Williams might not play baseball anymore, but it'll always be an important part of his life, the 55-year-old admits during an exclusive chat with OK! about the sport while promoting his Tune Into Lung Health campaign — a "program that uses music to raise awareness about interstitial lung disease."

Acknowledging he'll never "be able to divorce completely" from the sport itself, Williams jokes he and baseball are "joined at the hip."

"It's a great thing to be associated with an organization like the Yankees. They have opened so many doors for me after my baseball playing career," he raves about the New York team.

As a retired player and four-time World Series champion, Williams tries "to make it a point to go to spring training once a year and make sure I contribute to the success of the team."

"Whether it's talking to a player or just hanging out [and] telling stories about how we did it as a team and getting that sort of a positive vibe out there," all Williams wants to do is pay it forward.

Plus, the athlete-turned-jazz guitarist — who was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award in 2009 — said players and staffers are "really aware of the fact that I was a baseball player," but am now an artist and a musician, he noted "it's cool to let them know there's also life after baseball and there's a lot of things you can do after you retire to make sure that you still have a full life."

As for how he thinks the Yankees' current 2024 season will play out, Williams declares his former team has "an opportunity to do something special this year, and they have a great start."

"I wish 'em all the best. They're going have a good year," he assures, pointing out "it was very disappointing to not have" the Yankees in the playoffs last season.

"In a way I think we're all guilty because we set that standard so high. We felt like it was a birthright to be in the playoffs," he continues, noting doing so is "kind of like a Yankees mandate."

Williams explains: "But, they're realizing that it's not as easy and you have to play the games, you have to stay healthy, you have to get a couple breaks here and there and you have to keep that same great attitude — looking forward to the next game, looking forward to the next week and just building a season block by block and brick by brick so you can have an opportunity to play in the postseason."

Aside from baseball, one of Williams' greatest pride and joys is playing music — which is why he teamed up with Boehringer Ingelheim to launch the Tune In To Lung Health program, allowing the exploration of how music and breathing can help people cope with the physical and emotional burden of interstitial lung disease (ILD).

On Friday, May 3, Williams will return to his home of Puerto Rico for a Tune In To Lung Health event, with the goal of raising awareness about ILD after the rare disease took his father’s life more than two decades ago.

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"My father passed away from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2001 and I don't want people to go through what we went through as a family with the misdiagnosis and trying to get information [without] really having a place to look to for education," he states of why the movement means so much to him.

Ultimately, Williams wants to raise awareness about this because you never know when it can become a reality for you or your loved ones.

"Either a loved one or a friend [could] be going through these conditions. So, we want to have all these resources available for people to go into and educate themselves," he says.

He adds, "Education is the key. Having the opportunity to talk more about these conditions and making the population aware of the fact that there are things happening that they may not know."

"My father was misdiagnosed for five years until a doctor found the right diagnosis," Williams reveals. "It was just a period of time that we were just so lost, very frustrated and angry that we couldn't find a solution for his problem. By the time that we were able to find an answer, there was not a lot much that we could do."

"My dad was our hero. He was our Superman, and he was just an outgoing guy," the retired center fielder sweetly said of his late father. "You know, jack of all trades, master of a whole bunch of them. He taught me how to play guitar. He taught me how to stay with discipline and commitment to everything we did — whether it was sports or music or arts or academics."

Williams expresses, "He was a huge influence in my life. He took this like a champ, never complained."

The motivational qualities Williams' father passed down to him even made it to the next generation, as his three children — Bernie Jr., 34, Beatriz, 30, and Bianca, 28 — all grew up to be talented individuals.

In fact, Bernie says Beatriz is a Brooklyn-based artist "trying to make connection and reconnect with her Puerto Rican roots" and recently had an exhibition in New York City displaying her fascinating artwork.