TAMPA — The last time Andy Pettitte pitched, he battled lower back and groin injuries and was unable to give the Yankees what they needed in the 2010 postseason.
Yesterday, he returned to spring training much healthier, and after a day in which he breezed through his first bullpen session since signing a $2.5 million minor league deal Friday with his former team, Pettitte said: “I feel like I’ve never left.”
But the lefty, who will turn 40 in June, is doing his best not to delude himself. He said he was unafraid of potential failure.
“There’s not because I know that can happen,” Pettitte said. “I know that I can hurt something. But I’m not scared of that. It’s a great opportunity. It’s a great challenge. But it’s a good challenge also to see if I can get back to where I was.”
Pettitte did not take long to impress one of his new teammates. Russell Martin, who started against the Pirates last night, chased Pettitte down before his bullpen session and asked him to wait for him to catch it.
Martin liked what he saw.
“That’s as good a bullpen [session] as I’ve seen all spring, from anyone,” Martin said after the 50-pitch outing.
“His command,” Martin said of what impressed him about Pettitte’s performance. “How serious he is every pitch, his mindset. It’s like it’s a game out there even when he’s throwing a bullpen. It’s good to see someone who takes it that seriously.”
Manager Joe Girardi cautioned against reading too much into a bullpen session and said the real tests for Pettitte likely will not start until the Yankees have broken camp. The manager didn’t rule out Pettitte pitching in a spring training game but added it was unrealistic to expect it to be a long outing.
The Yankees also are trying to avoid any of the physical problems Pettitte encountered two seasons ago.
“I told [pitching coach] Larry [Rothschild] as soon as I got done, ‘You’re gonna have to tell me to take it slow,’ ” Pettitte said. “It’s going to be hard. I’m glad I feel good right now, but I know if I get too far ahead of myself, I could have a setback.”
Pettitte did not tell general manager Brian Cashman he had made up his mind to return until the first day of spring training.
“I knew I needed to let [Cashman] know I was interested in pitching,” Pettitte said. “The day I got here, I told them that. It wasn’t like I got the bug to play because I was around the guys.”
But it took longer for a contract agreement to be reached than Pettitte bargained for.
“I thought they’d sign me within a couple days, and I’d be ready for Opening Day,” Pettitte said.
The negotiations took so long, Pettitte talked with his family about potentially playing elsewhere, but ultimately opted not to.
“I probably could have got a lot more money, but this is where my heart was,” Pettitte said. “I had no desire to go anywhere else.”
Those who have tried — and largely failed — to come out of retirement point to the hardship of the daily grind as one of the reasons the comeback did not work out. Pettitte said he was aware of that tendency before he made up his mind.
“You forget how difficult it is mentally,” Pettitte said. “The biggest thing for me is I had that desire, the desire that wasn’t there last year.”
But he still wasn’t convinced this was the correct move to make until recently.
“Mentally, I don’t think I really thought I could do this again, to the capacity I wanted to be able to do it, until just a few weeks ago,” Pettitte said.
The comeback story began in earnest yesterday, but Pettitte knows he can’t predict how it will turn out.
“It may not be a happy ending,” Pettitte said. “I feel like it’s the right thing to do in my heart.”
dan.martin@nypost.com