For the Record: I am a diehard Yankee fan; Andy Pettitte is one of my four favorite Yankees of the last 10 years (the homegrown guys: Mariano Rivera; Derek Jeter; & Bernie Williams); I believe that he used PED’s waaaay more than two times, and frankly, I don’t really care — at least not in that morally indignant sort of way. I didn’t really care in 1995, 1998,  2001, or 2007. I will cheer wildly for him the next time that I see him pitch.

 


For those who missed it, here is the Pettitte Apology Recap:

 

"In 2002 I was injured. I had heard that human growth hormone could promote faster healing for my elbow," …."I felt an obligation to get back to my team as soon as possible. For this reason, and only this reason, for two days I tried human growth hormone. Though it was not against baseball rules, I was not comfortable with what I was doing, so I stopped. This is it — two days out of my life; two days out of my entire career, when I was injured and on the disabled list," he said. "I wasn’t looking for an edge. I was looking to heal." …”I  have the utmost respect for baseball and have always tried to live my life in a way that would be honorable," …"If I have let down people that care about me, I am sorry, but I hope that you will listen to me carefully and understand that two days of perhaps bad judgment should not ruin a lifetime of hard work and dedication. …I have tried to do things the right way my entire life, and, again, ask that you put those two days in the proper context. People that know me will know that what I say is true."
 

ESPN Media Reaction? So Michael Wilbon said yesterday on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption that he believes Pettitte’s story. Steve Phillips says that “Andy Pettitte is a good person and a great competitor and that’s not going to change. So I think in this regard he did help himself.” As referenced in our recent post Jayson Stark doubled-up as Pettitte’s pro-bono defense lawyer. And then there is this from baseball analyst Tim Kurkijian:

“My guess is that he [Bud Selig] is not going to suspend Andy Pettitte, and I don’t think he should suspend Andy Pettitte. I mean, if we really look at this in 2002. A guy who used HGH a couple of times in order to get his elbow better so he can come back and help his team. If that is an offense that demands a suspension, then boy we are going to have a whole lot of suspensions out there…. There is a really big difference between using anabolic steroids and HGH a couple of times. HGH helps in recovery. It doesn’t make you bigger and stronger technically so I would be really surprised if a suspension followed this…" 

 

Okay, there hasn’t been this much positive coverage about coming clean since li’l George confessed about that cherry tree. Is it me, or are we stuck in an episode of “Leave it to Beaver”? Kurkijian is correct that Andy Pettitte should not be suspended, but it is simply mind-boggling that Pettitte’s story is believed as gospel without any doubt or scrutiny. Why hasn’t Kurkijian or some of his colleagues even questioned whether Andy is even telling the truth? Why is no one bringing up the fact that Pettitte was also originally named in the Jason Grimsley bust? Or that his improved physique coincided with his workouts with Roger Clemens? Where was the whole “healing benefits of HGH discussion” BEFORE guys named Ankiel, Glaus, and Pettitte were busted? Barry Bonds could only wonder where Tim Kurkijian and all of these journalists were when he was rubbing lotion on his knees in front of a whole bunch of reporters.

The Pettite reaction on the part of Kurkijian and so many other journalists is just plain sad. Especially in the 4 year aftermath of "the Bonds treatment’. It is a study in people believing what they want to believe… a study in "cognitive dissonance theory"… a study in willfully going deaf, dumb, and blind. Andy Pettitte is just an aw shucks, down home, country boy who couldn’t possibly be trying to get an edge like well, a few hundred other baseball players. In closing, we will prove that the ESPN media situation has become stranger than fiction. They have managed to turn Mike Lupica into the voice of sanity: on the Sports Reporters this weekend he said: "The idea that a guy like Andy Pettitte can say I’m not like those… other guys… is a preposterous notion". …There: somebody said it.

UPDATE: At the time of posting this yesterday, I had not seen this article "Pettitte’s Apology: A Joke" by ESPN’s Jemele Hill. Hill, a past Bonds-basher if there ever was one, did an amazing thing here in separating herself from so many of her colleagues. She treated Pettitte’s apology the very same way she responded to flaxseed oil. Whether one agrees or not with any of Hill’s individual columns, she deserves much respect for having a very scarce commodity amongst ESPN columnists: Consistency and Integrity.