TAMPA – I so badly want to be angry at Andy Pettitte. Yet, I cannot sustain it.
I am mad at Pettitte, not for the drug taking, but for lying to my face about it, multiple times over the years. Long before the Mitchell Report was even a consideration there were whispers about Roger Clemens’ association with illegal performance enhancers, and there was Pettitte suddenly right beside the Rocket, getting bigger and stronger. It led to questions and the same responses from Pettitte since the late 1990s: No way, not a chance, not me.
It turns out that, at least since 2002, that was not the truth.
So why do I find myself so forgiving? There is something gentle and, yes, sincere about Pettitte that makes him so likeable. So when he grabbed my hand yesterday morning to shake it and looked unblinking into my eyes to apologize – just me and him in front of his locker – the irritation dissolved and was replaced, if anything, by feeling uncomfortable to see Pettitte compelled to do this.
It was a strange sensation. Pettitte was the one who had done wrong, yet I felt bad for him. I think this is a sensation being shared by a lot of folks – wanting to be mad at Pettitte, and failing. So I tried to come to peace with why.
Pettitte is the last regular left from when I was the Yankees beat writer for this paper, and I have always felt warmly toward him. Probably for the same reason I always felt so kindly toward another quiet man I long covered named Bernie Williams. Both were anti-A-Rods, comfortable melding into the background. Both seemed genuine and full of information and insight if you just took the time to chat.
In front of his locker yesterday, just the two of us, Pettitte acknowledged the long association and said that is what made moments like this painful for him, and that he has had too many of these moments recently. “You have always been fair and professional with me, and I hate what I did, I hate that I wasn’t honest,” Pettitte said.
Maybe this is what a con man does, looks you right in the eyes and makes you feel more lies are the truth, flatters as he fibs. Or maybe this is what a decent man who has done wrong does. I am a cynic and a skeptic, not one who easily believes alibis, certainly not from those who have deceived me.
Yet here I was telling Pettitte we would be fine, and kind of hating myself for it. Again, it is not the HGH use. I am agnostic about players taking illegal performance enhancers. I wish they didn’t, but I also understand the competitive/pressurized forum they operate within that leads to such poor decisions. As much as I adore baseball, I realize this is entertainment, not unlike the movies. People don’t want to see flabby actors in thrillers, and we are learning more and more action stars take short cuts to their muscles. The item with all of baseball’s statistical achievements in it is the record book, not the New Testament.
I understand Pettitte was not going to admit his secret to a reporter, no matter our long-standing, amicable relationship or how many times I asked. But it doesn’t mean I have to like being deceived. It doesn’t mean I don’t wonder about how comfortably he looked in my eyes all those years and time after time made a lie play like truth.
You bet that was on my mind even yesterday, alone in front of Pettitte’s locker. Yet here I was – cynic, skeptic – wanting to believe him again. Why? Because I still like him. Because the overall history of this gentle and, yes, sincere fellow does not completely vanish at this low moment.
Most Yankees fans will cheer Pettitte simply because he is in this uniform, and he received warm ovations from the few hundred in attendance to watch his first 2008 workout with the team. But I sense there are plenty of folks similar to me who still like Pettitte, perhaps even against our better judgment, because there is something gracious and graceful about him.
Here’s hoping we are all not being fooled again. Here’s hoping the guy who shook my hand and looked into my eyes did it as a good man, not a con man.