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Thoughts About Andy Pettitte ...
JackWESQ
Posts: 2,133 ✭✭✭
in Sports Talk
Ask me a couple of years ago about Andy Pettitte and I would probably say, "he's that pitcher for the Yankees/Astros who has the sweet windup delivery, good MLB career and really good career winning percentage." (It now stands at .640.) But now, when I think about him, I still think all those things, but I also see him as being perhaps the most honest/truthful person regarding this whole steroid/HGH debacle. With so much "he's lying, you're lying, I'm going to sue you, he misremembered, etc.," it is really refreshing to see someone say I messed up, I admit it and please forgive and you what, we will. At first, I was thinking that I can't wait till Pettitte pitches and see everyone boo him, but if I was there (and I might be as I'll be in NY on opening day), I would clap and commend him for his honestly.
/s/ JackWESQ
P.S. As his .640 winning percentage would tend to support, Pettitte has never had a losing season in his 13 seasons. I thought I read somewhere that Babe Ruth was the only pitcher that pitched in at least 10 years and never had a losing season. Tim Hudson currently has pitched in 9 seasons and never had a losing season. Anybody recall reading/seeing something similar?
/s/ JackWESQ
P.S. As his .640 winning percentage would tend to support, Pettitte has never had a losing season in his 13 seasons. I thought I read somewhere that Babe Ruth was the only pitcher that pitched in at least 10 years and never had a losing season. Tim Hudson currently has pitched in 9 seasons and never had a losing season. Anybody recall reading/seeing something similar?
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"I knew it was wrong to take them, so I stopped, but then took them again even though my holier than tho mentality told me to get off them the first time. After my name got published in the Mitchell Report, I'm acting like I came forward and volunteered this information.
Hey, that's the great, swell kinda guy I am."
Funny how his faith, loyalty to the truth, and conscious was non-existent when he was taking HGH.
: insert picture of fish wrapped in newspaper here :
<< <i>Personally, I think his shtick has grown old.
"I knew it was wrong to take them, so I stopped, but then took them again even though my holier than tho mentality told me to get off them the first time. After my name got published in the Mitchell Report, I'm acting like I came forward and volunteered this information.
Hey, that's the great, swell kinda guy I am."
Funny how his faith, loyalty to the truth, and conscious was non-existent when he was taking HGH.
: insert picture of fish wrapped in newspaper here :
One of the tactics that people use to deflect the light from the obvious is to " Kill the fireman not the fire. " Lenin, stated it a little better , " Never answer your opponents questions, just smear them . "
It might serve you well to not misremember this.
Why do people look to praise the Giambi's of the baseball world becausse they came clean AFTER they had been caught. They only look honest because they come from a culture that is chalk full of blatant liars, including that fat head leading the way.
I will save my praise for a guy who truly does come clean. If there is an active player who comes forward, without ever being accused, calls a suprise press conference, and then just drops a bomb shell that he has been doing performance enhancers for several years now...and shows true regret, then I will tip my hat.
I would also tip my hat to a MLB union guy who comes forward and fights hard for a clean union. Many suspect Greg Maddux is as clean as can be. If there are more like him, then these guys should be in Donald Fehr's face demanding that the playing field is level? If none of them don't, it can only lead me to conclude the following...
1) There really aren't many clean guys at all
2) If there are, and they don't fight for a clean game(WITH REAL TESTING AND PENALITIES), then I feel no sympathy for any of them if their careers are ever downgraded due to suspicion, because they must not see anything wrong with it. They are a part of the problem.
I tend to lean towards number one.
I for one believe that Andy Pettitte has told the TRUTH since the Mitchell report. Still .... there are those who want to damn him anyway because either he snitched on his friend, waited so long to come clean, waited till something happened to come clean, or they just hate the Yankees.
ISO 1978 Topps Baseball in NM-MT High Grade Raw 3, 100, 103, 302, 347, 376, 416, 466, 481, 487, 509, 534, 540, 554, 579, 580, 622, 642, 673, 724__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ISO 1978 O-Pee-Chee in NM-MT High Grade Raw12, 21, 29, 38, 49, 65, 69, 73, 74, 81, 95, 100, 104, 110, 115, 122, 132, 133, 135, 140, 142, 151, 153, 155, 160, 161, 167, 168, 172, 179, 181, 196, 200, 204, 210, 224, 231, 240
I refuse to damn a player for...
a: taking PEDs to try to get over an injury as quickly as possible. Think about it...you've spent your entire life playing baseball and would give anything to just be able to get on the field and play! You're also making millions of dollars to do just that, and you want to, or just feel that you need to get out there and earn your money.
b: You see opposing players who you know are using PEDs, and they are affecting your stats/making you look worse than you are/etc..... You know you can't get them to stop, since you don't control their actions, and the players union doesn't/won't support testing. You also realize that it is generating more exciting games for the fans, and bringing more money to the teams...and therefore allowing you to make more $$. So you take PEDs to level the playing field. It's the old "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
I also firmly believe that it was completely unprofessional for the Mitchell Report to include players' names. This is the major problem with it; they knew they didn't, nor could they, include all the players who were using PEDs. To selectively name only a small percentage of the players is grossly unfair to them, since players who were/are using PEDs and weren't named in the report, get off scott-free. Also, George Mitchell himself urged Bud Selig to forego punishing any player named in the report. If he didn't want any players punished, then why in Hell did he put their names in the report?
Additionally, how do any of us know what kind of "performance enhancers" players were using before all this started in the late-1980's/early-1990's. Steroids and the like were around at least by the mid-late 1970's. Since the media wasn't looking for PEDs back then, and in fact, were still basically "protecting" players (at least the stars), we'll never know what was going on before the late-1980's.
It's all BS, and this mentality of "guilty until proven innocent" is both un-Constitutional, and reeks of Naziism.
Steve
I was going to say something-----------nevermind.
It's hard to stop the bleeding when you keep shooting yourself in the foot!!
Don't know if this is the "stone" you are looking for, but it looks like Hank Steinbrenner has thrown a pretty good size stone ... at the NFL.
H. Steinbrenner Calls Out NFL
/s/ JackWESQ
Hank Steinbrenner says football has bigger steroid problem than baseball
TAMPA, Fla. -- Hank Steinbrenner insists baseball is being picked on for its trouble with performance-enhancing drugs, and claims the problem is bigger in football.
"I don't like baseball being singled out," the New York Yankees senior vice president said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Monday night.
Everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs.
--Hank Steinbrenner
"Everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don't know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don't tell me it's not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players."
Answered NFL spokesman Greg Aiello: "We've had year-round random testing with immediate suspensions since 1990 and we conduct approximately 12,000 steroids tests a year."
Steinbrenner's comments came after Andy Pettitte met with reporters for the first time since the Yankees pitcher was named in the Mitchell report. Two days after the report was released in December, Pettitte confirmed he used human growth hormone in 2002; two weeks ago, he told congressional investigators he also used HGH for one day in 2004.
"A lot of baseball people thought that baseball would be the last sport that it would be a problem in and probably just ignored it too long," Steinbrenner said. "But the fact is it's been in football a long time and it's been in basketball, I'm sure. Why baseball is being singled out, I don't know. I don't know. I know all the excuses -- `Well, it's America's game and it's the statistics.'
"That's not an excuse. If a sport is riddled with it, it's riddled with it. Why aren't they looking at the NFL?" he said.
Steinbrenner said baseball will "clean up the game."
"We're going to do it," he said.
<< <i>I also firmly believe that it was completely unprofessional for the Mitchell Report to include players' names. >>
I guess you would have preferred to keep this all under the rug, then.
<< <i>Well said Steve, I agree. >>
His report should have just said he estimates that X pct of players used.
To name just the few he did was wrong IMO.
Either name everyone or no one.
Yes I know he named only those from 2 or 3 trainers depositions and thus those 2 or 3 teams bore the
brunt of his what appears now as a witch hunt.
Steve
George J. Mitchell - Director
The fact that Selig would choose Mitchell to head this investigation despite his obvious conflict of interest is further evidence of the ineptitude with which MLB has handled the entire steroid issue from day one.
It was a mistake for baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to appoint Mitchell to head this inquiry. Even if there wasn't any bias in Mitchell's investigation, there was certainly a conflict of interest - a conflict exacerbated by the longstanding Yankees-Red Sox rivalry and the prominence of Yankees players among those accused of steroids use. Surely Selig could have found some other elder statesman to take on this job, one with no affiliations with any major league team.
"The answer was in the Patriots eyes. Gone were the swagger and c0ck sure smirks, replaced by downcast eyes and heads in hands. For his poise and leadership Eli Manning was named the game's MVP. The 2007 Giants were never perfect nor meant to be. They were fighters, scrappers....now they could be called something else, World Champions."
On a related note: Report: Ortiz not sure if he took steroids
"Ortiz told the Boston Herald that he could not say definitively if he had ever used performance-enhancing drugs in the past. The burly designated hitter also said that if he did, it happened when he was much younger."
Not sure, huh? LOL
"The answer was in the Patriots eyes. Gone were the swagger and c0ck sure smirks, replaced by downcast eyes and heads in hands. For his poise and leadership Eli Manning was named the game's MVP. The 2007 Giants were never perfect nor meant to be. They were fighters, scrappers....now they could be called something else, World Champions."
BTW: Cubby=Cub Fan