Monday, December 11, 2006

2-year, $32 million.

Y'all are a few years late realizing that Andy Pettitte is a hypocrite, y'hear?:

"The Astros made one offer here and compared it to the one over there. That's not just smart baseball, it's smart business.

Fans are smart, too, and should realize this was about good, old American greed, nothing more and nothing less.

Pettitte has every right to cash in, sure. Good for him. He had his reasons for wanting to stay, but in the end Pettitte was no different than, say, Terrell Owens.

There were 32 million reasons home is where he'll hang his Yankees cap."


How can Ken Rosenthal and others claim the Pettitte contract is worth $32 million when the rest of the world is reporting 1 year, $16 million?

Because the second year is a player option. It's not guaranteed money. Theoretically, Pettitte could turn down the money and go back on the market.

But, since it's a player option, there's no reason Pettitte won't make at least that much money in 2008.

As a safety net for the Yankees , Pettitte (ahem) has promised (heh heh) that he wouldn't enforce the option (wink wink) if he was not healthy enough (nudge nudge) to pitch in 2008.

Of course, Trustworthy is as Trustworthy does:

"I don't know about you. But if I'm a pitcher who's had elbow trouble two of the past three years and was offered $12 million to pitch, while still getting to tuck my kids into bed, hanging with my lifelong friends and attending my home church, then slap away.

The only slap in the face was by Pettitte. He is a good man. Church-going. Sings in the choir. Brings his best.

But in this case he was at his worst. The advice Pettitte has followed contradicts everything he ever said was most important in his life. It also cast a shadow on all the good feelings he brought his hometown.

'My heart started pulling me, tugging me to come back down here.'

Andy Pettitte, December 2003, about Houston

Sometimes the best spin is none at all. All Pettitte needed to do was be honest.

Tell us it was about the money. Tell us, yeah, it's going to be tough leaving the wife and kids again for maybe eight months, but $32 million is $32 million. We'd understand.

'My family is the most important thing to me. I think everybody realizes that now. I'm sure everyone thought I'd just go after the money. It wasn't about the money. I could have gotten a lot more money other places.'

Andy Pettitte, December 2003

Everyone should realize something else now. Team Andy again is talking about it not being about the money, even saying again that Pettitte could have gone elsewhere for considerably more than the two-year, $32 million paid by the Yanks. They've turned the tables. They've blamed McLane. Don't buy it."

1 comment:

susan said...

Their arguments mainly feed from Andy's 2003 remarks. He wasn't being a phony, but he left out the biggest point--as anyone would in not burning bridges. The Yankees publicly hung him out to dry in 2003 and to a lesser degree in prior years. Andy chose to focus on a more positive explanation for his move.