Williams, Yankees Win On Sunday

Bernie Williams won the AL batting title, Shane Spencer hit another grand slam and George Steinbrenner couldn't have been happier.

All was well and good for the New York Yankees on the final day of the regular season, and with ample reason.

Playing in peak form, the Yankees won their seventh consecutive game and ended their incredible regular season with 114 wins by beating the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 8-3 Sunday.

"You're not even allowed to believe you're better than those teams," said Steinbrenner, ticking off a list of Yankees teams that included Hall of Famers such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson.

"But they've won more games than any of them. And that puts them among the greatest Yankee teams of all time," Steinbrenner gushed in a joyous locker room after New York (114-48) became the first team since the 1954 Cleveland Indians (111-43) to play better than .700 ball over an entire season.

Williams went 2-for-2 with a pair of singles and a sacrifice fly to end the season with a .339 average -- two points better than Boston's Mo Vaughn, who went 2-for-4 Sunday.

Williams became the first member of the Yankees to win the batting title since Paul O'Neill hit .359 in the strike-shortened 1994 season.

"It feels great, absolutely, when you add your name to a list of players that have accomplished this feat," Williams said. "Coming into this season, I would have never imagined it with all the distractions, trying to get my game going, missing six weeks with an injury. It's just very satifying."

Spencer hit his third grand slam in nine days, solidifying his spot on the postseason roster so thoroughly that manager Joe Torre will give serious consideration to making him the starting left fielder.

Spencer, called up from the minors for the fourth time this season on Aug. 31, got the start in left field because Torre wanted to see how he fared against a right-hander. He entered the game hitting .465 against lefties and .200 against righties.

The answer was provided emphatically against reliever Albie Lopez in the fifth when Spencer hit his 10th homer of the season and his eighth this month, a line shot over the wall in left-center.

"I usually have one or two weeks a year where I hit five or seven homers," Spencer said. "I'm having that week right now, and it's a good time to have it."

New York, which won the second-most games ever behind the 1906 Cubs (116-36), opens the postseason at home against Texas on Tuesday night.

Spencer, who also had grand slams Sept. 18 at Baltimore and Sept. 24 against the Devil Rays, has 13 hits in his last 26 at-bats with seven homers and 20 RBI.

Darryl Strawberry also showed Torre he was ready for the playoffs, going 2-for-2 and showing no ill effects from a thigh bruise.

Three pitchers on the bubble for the postseason roster, Hideki Irabu, Graeme Lloyd and Darren Holmes, met with different results.

Irabu worked two innings and allowed three successive hits as the Devil Rays scored twice in the sixth, while Lloyd allowed one hit in one inning. Holmes worked the ninth and allowed two singles, then found out he would be left off the playoff roster.

"I'm very disappointed," he said, "but I can't question the manager's decision because he's the one who got us here. If we make the second round, I want to pitch."

Williams singled into the right-field corner in the first inning, deciding against trying for a double. He hit a long fly ball to center for a sacrifice fly in the third, then singled sharply up the middle in the fifth as the Yankees were beginning a five-run outburst.

Torre sent up a pinch-hitter for Williams in the sixth after the Yankees learned Vaughn had struck out in his final at-bat.

Jim Bruske (1-0) made his first start for the Yankees, allowing four hits and one earned run in five innings with a walk and two strikeouts. Of his 72 pitches, 54 were strikes.

Rick White (2-6), who relieved starter Bryan Rekar to begin the third, took the loss. Tampa Bay, 1-11 against the Yankees, used eight pitchers.

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