HOUSTON — Regret colors this final weekend for the 2013 Yankees, although so does acceptance.
Andy Pettitte, who long ago decided he would retire for real following this campaign, looked at the schedule, saw the Yankees wrapped up their regular season here at Minute Maid Park and rooted to not pitch in his hometown, against the only other team for which he has played.
“Obviously, I’m hoping that I’m not going to have to pitch here because I’m getting ready for the postseason,” Pettitte said Friday, reflecting on his thoughts from just a few weeks ago.
No need now to prepare for the postseason, so Pettitte will wrap up his terrific, 18-year career here Saturday night against the horrible Astros, with 50 guests attending on tickets he has gathered and who knows how many other Pettitte fans showing up to pay tribute. He received a warm tribute from the folks Friday during the middle of the fifth inning as the Astros saluted him in a brief ceremony.
Indeed, the timing and location of Pettitte’s final start allow him to pay tribute to the odd detour his career took nearly 10 years ago, and it should allow he and the Yankees to be grateful for that plot twist. It seems as though Pettitte’s 2004-06 stay with the Astros, his trial separation from the Yankees, caused both Pettitte and the Yankees feeling better about their relationship.
“It’s just so different. The magnitude of everything. It’s the Yankees, you know?” Pettitte said. “It’s not talking down to the Astros, but the Yankees make everything look small. There’s guys retiring with other organizations. You see what the Yankees do for Mo [Rivera] and how it is. It’s just the Yankees and it’s a different animal, that’s for sure.”
There’s no other Yankees great with a career track matching Pettitte’s. You have the homegrown guys who spent their entire career in the pinstripes (Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Jeter, Rivera, et al), and then you have the guys who entered mid-career and made their mark (Ruth, Reggie, O’Neill et al). Only Pettitte came up through the system, contributed left and then returned for a second great run.
He expressed no hard feelings about the past on Friday. Pettitte, thinking back to his departure for the Astros in the 2003-04 offseason, said, “It was a time and place where I understood. The Yankees had known that my elbow had been bothering me for a long time. And I had been pitching with it. I believe God works everything out, man.” He didn’t feel bad, he added, about missing three years to climb up the Yankees’ all-time rankings.
At the time, though? Pettitte was pretty fired up. He and Roger Clemens, having unretired to leave the Yankees for Pettitte and the Astros, gave Houston its three most exciting baseball years, including the Astros’ first postseason series victory in 2004 and their first World Series appearance in 2005.
His left elbow indeed gave out on him in ’04, resulting in surgery, and he re-entered free agency in November 2006 having put together two stellar seasons.
“When we were having our end-of-season meetings, he ranked really, really high on the free-agent board,” said Billy Eppler, the Yankees’ assistant general manager. “He answered a lot of the variables that exist with a lot of the guys who are typically outside New York. How he’ll handle it and all of that stuff.”
And the health issue that lingered three years prior dissipated with the ’04 surgery. “He had demonstrated” his good health in ’05 and ’06, Eppler said.
So Pettitte came back for what turned out to be, essentially, six one-year deals from 2007 through this year, with his first retirement occurring in 2011. Turmoil occasionally arose, most notably Pettitte’s appearance in the 2007 Mitchell Report and his subsequent confession to using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, yet his upfrontness about that minimized the damage.
The Clemens-Pettitte friendship was destroyed by Clemens’ decision to fight the Mitchell Report allegations, and Pettitte had to participate in the U.S. government’s unsuccessful prosecution of Clemens, ultimately helping him with lukewarm testimony. Nevertheless, Clemens will be here on Sunday to honor Rivera, and Pettitte said, “If I see him, it’s fine. It’ll be great to see him.” I predict a hug.
Short of a playoff appearance, this will be an ideal setting for Pettitte’s farewell: As a Yankee, sharing a field with the Astros. He became an icon in The Bronx. Then he gained a second following in South Texas while ultimately strengthening his status in The Bronx.
When that’s how it plays out, you know you’ve done it right.