Warrior, competitor, father figure, professional, great teammate.
But above all, a winner.
Those were the descriptions given about Andy Pettitte by teammates Friday when the Yankees big game left-hander announced he would retire at the end of the season.
“Andy’s a professional. He expects a lot out of himself. He beats himself up a lot,” said Derek Jeter, who figures to be the only member of the Core Four still standing next season. “It’s fun watching him beat himself up because he expects to be perfect. Nobody’s perfect, but he has those expectations and that’s the reason he’s had so much success over the years.”
Take that professionalism, that desire to succeed, that self-scrutiny, and you get a glimpse of Pettitte as seen by teammates.
“A warrior. Obviously a guy that always gave his soul for us,” said another Yankee icon pitcher and fellow Core Four guy Mariano Rivera, who called his relationship with Pettitte as being “like brothers” for so long. “Every game he pitched, he went all-out. He didn’t hold anything. Whatever he had that day, he gave it. To me, that was his [strength].”
But it wasn’t merely his clutch, bite-you-to-win attitude on the mound that endeared him to teammates. Fellow starter Phil Hughes described an approachable star who never put himself beyond young players seeking advice.
“He’s been a great teammate, mentor, father figure to a lot of us here,” said Hughes, who praised the 41-year-old lefty for “the way he’s handled himself and the way he’s treated the young guys. He was never too good, especially like in spring training, to talk to guys.”
“It’s tough,” Friday night’s starter CC Sabathia said after the Yankees‘ 5-1 win over the Giants at the Stadium. “He’s not just one of my best friends on the team, he’s one of my best friends in life.”
Pettitte will retire as the greatest winner in postseason history. And that is what most recall. But to a man, players said they saw that fire every time, whether the game was in October or April.
“He is the definition of a gamer. When he takes the ball, he is intense,” David Robertson said. “He just never gives up, he never gives in.”
But the big game success was what separated Pettitte.
“Just one of the all-time greatest winners,” Alex Rodriguez said. “Sometimes you build up a guy and you put him on a pedestal [but] he’s one guy, the closer you get, the bigger and better he gets.”
Regardless from what dugout you watched from. Two who battled Pettitte for years as competitors, Vernon Wells and Curtis Granderson, saw that fire.
“[It was] the look in his eye and how competitive he was on each and every pitch,” Wells said. “You couldn’t really get him to focus on anything but locking in on the catcher.”
Granderson praised Pettitte as a “great competitor,” noting “a lot of guys have to adapt as they get older and change, but his cutter worked from start to finish and is still working.”
Jeter admitted picking one Pettitte moment bordered on impossible, but he did summon the memory of one game in particular: Game 5 of the 1996 World Series, a 1-0 Yankees win when Pettitte pitched into the ninth inning.
“It’s so difficult to sit here and try to pick one memory [but] that game in Atlanta was pretty good, in 1996 when he shut out the Braves,” Jeter said. “That was probably one of the better games he’s pitched in his career.”