SUCKED BACK IN: Andy Pettitte will make his return to the big leagues on Sunday. Just like Mariano Rivera, who said he will play next season, Pettitte found the allure of the game too hard to
resist. (Getty Images)
We talk drugs in sports all the time without really discussing the most powerful intoxicant of all:
The sport itself.
Which brings us to the pinstriped intersection of Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera. One religious man “retired” because he was convinced it was time to become a year-round family guy and, essentially, Rivera cited the same reasons in hinting in spring training that this would be his final season.
Except there was Rivera yesterday admitting he was leaning toward a 2013 return even before his season-ending knee injury gave him a cause to return because, “I don’t want to leave like that (on his back, an injured player).”
One reason this Yankees season may not be lost along with Rivera is that Pettitte could not resist the life. So he is un-retiring, returning to potentially bolster the pitching staff, starting Sunday against the Mariners, re-injecting baseball into his being.
In the end, there is an addictive quality to the game. As mild mannered as Rivera and Pettitte may seem, they are competition junkies — and where will they satisfy that jones in the second halves of their lives? Where will they find this level of camaraderie, common purpose, money and fame? In this life, someone picks up your sweaty jock for you, washes it and has it hanging clean in your locker the next day.
It is symbolic of a life in which — aside from the prep work and playing — everything else will be taken care of for you. Your finances, travel schedule, food preparation, etc. You can shut off your mind to such an extent that you might not even remember the name of the doctor who found a blood clot in your leg and may do your knee surgery — as Rivera did yesterday. If you can handle the expectations, it is a fantasyland that even a pious man with big plans to build churches, spread the gospel and watch his children grow before it is too late has difficulty exiting.
This is why Jamie Moyer comes back at 49, why Miguel Tejada signs a minor league contract, why the uniform has to be practically yanked off everyone blessed to wear one.
“I was leaning toward coming back,” Rivera said when asked what his plans were before he tore up his knee in Kansas City. “I was pretty strong on that. … Traveling, I hate it, and playing, I love it.”
Now when the general speculation was that Rivera was going to retire after 2012, a friend of his cautioned me that the great closer vacillated weekly between what he wanted to do with the rest of his days and what he was doing joyously these days.
So it will be interesting what happens over the next few months as Rivera glimpses retirement. He will rehab and be around the team some. But, basically, he will have a summer off for the first time as an adult; plenty of time for family and church to pull him toward retirement. Or plenty of time to renew his hunger to throw more cutters, try to ride The Canyon of Heroes yet again.
Pettitte had this last summer, said he loved every second of family life and still could not conquer the magnet pulling him back. He fully re-enters the life Sunday, the drug that is the game still pulsing in his bloodstream.
“It’s the love and the passion that I have for the game,” Rivera said in explaining why he was not walking away even before the injury.
The strongest addiction of the game remains the game.
joel.sherman@nypost.com