In baseball, there are few sadder things than the end of a great player’s career. It reminds us not just how quickly time passes — even the oldest ballplayers are still young men, the exploits of their prime still fresh in memory — but of how much we demand from the best athletes. They have to give not only their lives but their identities over to their abilities to play their sport well, only to be told, once they reach the point at which most comparably successful people are just beginning to ascend toward the heights of their professions, that they are done, and will have to find something else to do.

Being well paid does nothing at all to soften the brutality of this final moment. There is a reason that investors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs who have made enough money for a hundred lifetimes by the time they’re 40 will invariably keep on working, or that jurists and dictators will, after senility has set in, retain their power. Telling them they don’t need to do so, that it’s on some level irrational and that they should retire to enjoy the fruits of their labor, is like telling them that they should cut off their left hands because they don’t need them. If you’re good at something, you do it until you’re no longer allowed to continue.

For these reasons and more, what looks to be the end of Bernie Williams’s career is a depressing note on which to start spring training. Last week, Williams announced that as the Yankees would not guarantee him a spot with the major league team, he would not be coming to camp; since he also expressed no desire to play for any other team, it seems that either the Yankees will yield or his career will end in a mute, inglorious fashion. Yesterday, Mariano Rivera told Sports Illustrated, “I think Bernie shouldn’t be treated that way,” assuring that this will be a subject of controversy for weeks to come.

No fair-minded person will claim the Yankees are treating Williams badly; in fact they’ve been admirably straightforward about where they see Williams in relation to the team. “We love and respect Bernie, but with the dynamic of our roster, there’s not a spot,” Brian Cashman told the New York Times last week, and you can’t hold that against him. Williams hasn’t been a great or even good player since he tore his knee up in 2003; he returned from the injury slow and hesitant, and became more so over a period of years, during which time the Yankees showed him a truly unusual loyalty. In 2005, he was one of the very worst players in baseball, maybe the worst — he slugged .367 and was basically unable to play the field or run the bases — and he not only held a full time job but was brought back yet again. Last year he performed heroically, not extraordinarily well, but clearly as well as he was able, and he gave the Yankees good at-bats when many players were going down to injury. Few, if any, people would say that obligates the Yankees in any way, though. With three durable All-Star outfielders and Melky Cabrera, who reminds one just the slightest bit of a very young Bernie Williams, to back them up, there’s no place for him in the outfield. The team has hitters equally as good as he is who can actually play other positions of need, and better hitters to serve as reserves. The only claim he has on the team is a debt of loyalty it has amply discharged.

To say that the Yankees are blameless here isn’t to say that Williams is at all to blame for putting them in an awkward spot by demanding a role they don’t want to give him. Williams is simply exercising what leverage he has, playing on the enormous respect and good will the team and the fans have for his inspired play, long service to the team, and exemplary character. Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth, to name two, did basically the same thing. John Franco and Al Leiter, for that matter, did the same thing. It’s what you’d do in their position. It’s hard to let go, especially for ballplayers, who devote themselves to their job in a way very few people understand, and then find themselves unable to do it anymore just when they’re starting to get good at it, because their bodies give out. Don’t hold anything against the Yankees; they ‘ve given Williams more years and more respect than any other team in baseball would have done for a similar player in similar circumstances. Don’t hold anything against Williams, either. He’s in a tough position. Just hope that both sides can work this out without any bitterness. Williams was far too great in far too many ways for far too long for the end of his career to be anything but an occasion to celebrate that greatness.

tmarchman@nysun.com