Sat 15 Dec 2007
One player decided to come clean earlier today. Out of all the Yankees named in the Mitchell Report Thursday, maybe the most disappointing was of home grown starting pitcher Andy Pettite.
Today, the 35 year-old veteran southpaw who won his 200th career game in Pinstripes during a successful 15 win season in his Yankee return admitted to using human growth hormone (HGH) twice to help recover from elbow tendinitis which was consistent with this key excerpt from Thursday’s report below:
“From April 21 to June 14, 2002, Pettitte was on the disabled list with elbow
tendonitis McNamee said that Pettitte called him while Pettitte was rehabilitating his elbow
in Tampa, where the Yankees have a facility, and asked again about human growth hormone.
Pettitte stated that he wanted to speed his recovery and help his team.
McNamee traveled to Tampa at Pettitte’s request and spent about ten days
assisting Pettitte with his rehabilitation. McNamee recalled that he injected Pettitte with human growth hormone that McNamee obtained from Radomski on two to four occasions. Pettitte paid McNamee for the trip and his expenses; there was no separate payment for the human growth hormone.
According to McNamee, around the time in 2003 that the BALCO searches
became public, Pettitte asked what he should say if a reporter asked Pettitte whether he ever used performance enhancing substances. McNamee told him he was free to say what he wanted, but that he should not go out of his way to bring it up. McNamee also asked Pettitte not to mention his name. McNamee never discussed these substances with Pettitte again.”
“If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I apologize,” Pettitte admitted earlier through his agent earlier Saturday. “I accept responsibility for those two days.”
“In 2002 I was injured. I had heard that human growth hormone could promote faster healing for my elbow,” he later acknowledged in the statement released to The Associated Press by agent Randy Hendricks.
“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,” he said. “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,” he also added.
It’s honorable for Pettite to come forward so quickly and respond to seeing his name in the report. Maybe it will inspire other players to do the same thing.
From what was said, it remains consistent with the information in the Mitchell Report pertaining to Pettite’s elbow injury.
It’s hard to classify him as a hardcore abuser just based on the evidence we have. It sure seems that he was a lot more cognizant than buddy Roger Clemens, whose reputation has been stained due to all the testimony ex-trainer Brian McNamee supplied the government with.
One thing that remains a question is why the list was so incomplete excluding some other big names which baseball fans would’ve expected to be on it.
A few which come to mind are Brady Anderson, Sammy Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, Jim Edmonds and former Met catcher Mike Piazza.
I like Piazza and was glad to not see his name on the list but does that mean he didn’t at some point juice? He did play for the Dodgers and there were quite a few names from some of their teams on the list including Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown.
Unless some more extensive investigations are done, there’s really no way of knowing whether the other players we listed used performance enhancers to gain competitive edges.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if anyone else is named in the future.
Jose Canseco was on hand and couldn’t believe Alex Rodriguez wasn’t on the list. God forbid. He’s supposed to be coming out with a new book. Who knows what the nature of that will be?
But the first ever 40/40 man who made no secret that he was a steroids user and abuser now looks very credible despite all the vehement denials by former teammates he accused in his Juiced book a few years ago.
We’re sure there will be more insanity and fallout from Thursday. Stay tuned.
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