Yankees will retire Andy Pettitte’s No. 46, despite his PED past
The New York Yankees will honor pitcher Andy Pettitte this summer, retiring his number and giving him a plaque in the team’s prestigious monument park. And while Pettitte’s career hit many of the hallmarks for such a thing — 15 years with the Yankees, five World Series wins, beloved status as a member of the “Core Four” — make no mistake this is a tricky situation.
The Yankees announced Monday that Pettitte, along with Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams, will have their numbers retired this season. In the case of Pettitte, the Yankees have to know this is a little awkward. Pettitte’s career carries a PED cloud, and with all eyes on Alex Rodriguez’s return from his PED suspension, the Yankees face a tough balancing act: celebrating one drug-linked star while grinning and bearing another.
The news about Pettitte originally came from his son’s Twitter feed on Sunday:
The response was what you expect — many people saying Pettitte deserves it while others pointed out his PED past. Pettitte, if you’ve forgotten, was listed in the Mitchell Report. He then admitted to using human growth hormone in 2002 when he was recovering from an injury. He apologized and very specifically tried to downplay his PED use, saying it was only for two days and he wasn’t playing at the time, so it wasn’t a “performance” issue.
In 2008, Pettitte testified about the HGH use of his teammate/friend Roger Clemens, which led to Clemens’ famous remark about Pettitte “misremembering” their conversations.
Despite all that, Pettitte isn’t sneered at by fans like other PED-connected players are. He escaped his controversy relatively unscathed — an example of what owning it immediately can do for public perception. Pettitte’s history, though, was enough for ex-teammate Chuck Knoblauch (who has his own issues) to take a shot at Pettitte on Twitter after the number-retirement news broke:
We don’t need to tell you how contentious the idea of “rewarding cheaters” is in baseball. Just look at the annual Hall of Fame vote, where hand wringing over what to do with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens has caused some voters to disregard that era of baseball entirely.
Then there’s the current Little League World Series scandal involving the Jackie Robinson West team from Chicago, which was stripped of its U.S. championship for using players from outside its boundaries. The public outcry there is: “you can’t reward cheaters.”
Andy Pettitte’s situation isn’t the same as Barry Bonds’ nor is it analogous to the 12-year-olds in Chicago, but it’s still fuzzy. Some people are going to love to see Pettitte celebrated. Some are going to think even the slightest bit of PED use — if you believe Pettitte’s story — is wrong, and thus he doesn’t deserve Yankee immortality.
Of course, all this is just a warm-up for when Pettitte’s eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2019. That’s going to be one heck of a debate.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
