Andy Pettitte is a former big league pitcher now

After 16 big league seasons, Andy Pettitte has retired. River Avenue Blues (best Yankees blog on the net IMHO) has a liveblog of the retirement press conference.

I hear a lot of chatter today about “Is Pettitte a Hall of Famer”? I think when a player retires, the day he retires or the day leading up to it speaks volumes about what kind of career he really had. Just like when someone dies, it’s who shows up to the funeral and what is said about that person that speaks volumes about the way they lived their life.

I think with Pettitte, we’re talking about a pretty special player and talent that was made even bigger because he did so much in a Yankee uniform.

He won 240 big league games. You can add 19 more of those in the playoffs. That’s a pretty special caliber player. He left with some still in the tank. He was a lefty that got by without a power arm. But he was hardly a ‘crafty’ lefty. He had a sneaky quick fastball at times. But whenever your team was going against Pettitte on the bump that night, you knew the odds were against you and your hitters were in for at the least a long 7 or 8 innings. That goes for his time in Houston as well.

His pick off move was probably the best that we’ve seen in the modern history of the game.

Another farewell of a player we became accustomed to spending summers in the sun with. Andy Pettitte did what he did very well for a long time.