Pettitte, Cashman eras could be winding down for Yankees
Posted: April 6, 2008

We appear to be seeing the beginning of the end of Andy Pettitte's marvelous career, and if you care about the New York Yankees, this may be more bad news than you can digest in one sitting.

Right now, you're thinking change is a good thing. You're thinking it was a good idea for Joe Torre to hit the road.

You're probably thinking the same about Brian Cashman, since he got cold feet when it came time to pull the trigger during the Johan Santana trade discussions.

You're tired of hearing about the long-term interests of the franchise. You want now.

But eventually, you're going to look back at the years in which Torre and Cashman ran the Yankees as the best time of your baseball-following life. Twelve seasons, twelve playoff appearances, four championships, six pennants, 10 division championships.

Actually, the real Brian Cashman-Joe Torre years were between 1996 and 2001. During those six seasons, the Yankees won the American League five times and the World Series four times. That's about as dominant as a baseball team can be in this era of parity.

Everything changed on that emotional night in 2001, when Arizona beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series. That was the night George Steinbrenner blew through the clubhouse and promised there'd be changes.

He was tired of not winning championships since he'd gone an entire agonizing year without one. He was going to do it his way. He did, too.

He returned to the old days of buying free agents, trading for big-name players and treating the Yankees like a fantasy league team. Some guys never learned.

The Yankees were going to change, anyway, as the core of those championship teams -- Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius, Tino Martinez, et al. -- got older. Steinbrenner wanted big, splashy replacements, and somewhere along the way, the chemistry got all screwed up.

One day, Torre and Cashman looked up and could barely recognize their clubhouse. Instead of the tight, cohesive, team-first group they'd had, the Yankees were now a bunch of independent contracts.

Gary Sheffield. Randy Johnson. Jose Contreras. Alex Rodriguez. Jaret Wright. Carl Pavano.

The Yankees were as much a tax bracket as a team, and it's absolutely amazing that they kept making playoff runs. They weren't a team in the same sense that the Brosius-O'Neill squads had been.

Cashman approved some of those bad moves, but mostly he went along with what Steinbrenner and the organization's Tampa office wanted. Then, when Steinbrenner's health began to fail a couple of years ago, Cashman got full control of baseball operations.

He did the right thing, the thing that will pay off for years to come. He stopped making short-term moves and began pouring millions into player development.

No matter what happens this season, the Yankees are poised to contend for years to come unless player development is gutted to bring in older guys.

Cashman may ultimately leave the Yankees because he made a long-term move in a short-term city. He refused to give up three or four of his best young players for Santana.

Cashman believed the Yankees didn't need Santana. He believed that Andy Pettitte -- and young guys like Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy -- could help the Yankees be competitive in 2008 and beyond.

When he made that decision, he had no way of knowing the turn Andy Pettitte's life would take.

His offseason would be blown apart by the revelation in the Mitchell Report that he'd used human growth hormone. That was just the beginning of the bad news.

Pettitte would soon testify against his former best friend, Roger Clemens. He would watch Clemens and another close friend, Brian McNamee, engage in a war of words that likely will end with one of them in jail.

He wasn't prepared for the beginning of the spring training or the start of the regular season. He was hit hard and often Saturday by the Tampa Bay Rays.

"I just didn't have anything," he told reporters.

Afterward, his body language spoke volumes. His back has been hurting, and his elbow, too. He has been devastated by the end of his relationship with Clemens, and at times, his closest friends have expected him to simply pack up and return home.

He probably never would have returned to the Yankees if not for his commitment to Cashman and the organization. He knew the role he'd played in the Santana discussions, and he felt an obligation.

He probably also knew that Cashman might have done the deal and not re-signed Pettitte if he'd known then what he knows now. He knows that the new man in charge of the Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner, is going to make Cashman's life hell if this season turns south.

Cashman's friends already predict he'll leave after this season because Hank Steinbrenner likely will be making the baseball decisions that Cashman and Torre once made.

Pettitte could be at the breaking point, and he knows it. He's miserable about this. No athlete you'll ever know reveals his moods with his words and gestures as much as Pettitte. If he's unhappy, he'll let you know he's unhappy.

When he played for the Astros, I bumped into him as he headed out the clubhouse door. With the club off the next day, I asked what he had planned.

"Going to boil crawfish with the family," he said.

He couldn't have been happier. He loves pitching and surely loves the money. He has never enjoyed the adulation or the celebrity. He's a simple kid from Deer Park, Texas. He loves simple things.

I'm guessing he would have retired after the Mitchell Report rather than face the barrage of questions and suspicions. In the end, he said quitting would be "cowardly." Also, there was that commitment to Cashman.

This could be a long, tough season for these two honorable men, and that's really a shame.

Labels: andy pettitte, brian cashman, douchebag, richard justice, specious reasoning