Pettitte Yankees' Best Signing of the Off-Season

Although heavily criticized for a second half collapse, an HGH fiasco, a foolish financial decision to reject the team's initial off-season offer, and a possibly fictionalized story regarding other teams' interest, Andy Pettitte has returned to the place he calls home, and the Yankees could not have made a better decision. Rather than pursue a questionably healthy Ben Sheets, a higher priced Oliver Perez, or any other mediocre-at-best pitcher left floating on a market inundated with unclaimed talented leftovers from the 1990s, the Yanks made, for once, a truly intelligent financial and ethical decision and landed Pettitte back in his comfortable pinstripes. Although players such as C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Texiera will certainly have a larger, more significant impact on the team's on the field success, Andy Pettitte brings the intangibles that no new signing could ever provide, and this makes Petite the Yankees best off-season signing.

The Yankees, a team largely defined by Grand Canyon-sized purchases that injected the team with the best talent money could buy, have defied conventional wisdom and won without a true farm system that feeds the mother club with talent when needed. Instead, they have plugged holes not with bubble gum style players, but rather with golden wrapped blue chippers who demanded all the Big Apple could afford, and, in the process, diluted the concept of a true Yankee. Long gone are the days of Berra, Mantle, Gehrig, and Guidry, where loyalty meant something and sacrifices existed as commonplace ventures to keep a team a dynasty. Sure, some players remain from year to year like Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Derek Jeter, but in the modern market, complete with hungry agents and sophisticated business plans, team camaraderie and chemistry takes a deep backseat to the ever-important dollar sign.

However, when Pettitte strolls into spring training, with the warm sun beaming over the top of the stands at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, in will walk a man seasoned in the art of being a true Yankee. Although he spent a few years on "sabbatical" with the Houston Astros, Pettitte's heart has always longed for the comforts of the Bronx, and maybe the Yankee brass, the same people who collectively kissed Joe Torre goodbye in a six minute meeting and later pushed aside Yankee heroes Ron Guidry and Don Mattingly, has peeked between its bags of gold to see the value in history. Although Pettitte's skill set has certainly declined in the last few years, an obvious concept considering the natural effects of aging, his presence still adds the intangible a team of superstars so often lacks: legitimate leadership.

Smothered in fame and expectation, and guided by an untested manager hailed for his Florida success with a miniscule payroll and a seemingly prepubescent average age, the Yankees may encounter stern tests inside the clubhouse as the pressure from the media grows and the egos shuffle perilously close to the edge. Infighting, jealousy, and misconceptions could derail a team that, on paper, should make considerable noise in the American League East, even with the now-formidable Rays and the forever-prepared Red Sox retooling to assert their dominance. With Jeter's role of captain earned primarily for his sheer hustle and professionalism on the field, Rivera's influence limited to the bullpen, and Posada's playing status uncertain, Pettitte remains as a man who will need to offer the guidance and perspective a team such as the Yankees may require. Thus, in a place of superstardom, fragile psychology, and intense exterior scrutiny, Pettitte could offer clubhouse stability, a true link between troubled players and management, and a public voice of sanity and control.

Even though many Yankee fans would prefer to see the financial vault ripped wide open for the likes of Manny Ramirez or the final starting slot given to young Phil Hughes, the addition of Pettitte to an already bolstered rotation of Sabathia, Burnett, Wang, and Chamberlain adds a competent fifth starter to compliment the power of the first four. Pettitte exists as the craftiest, most experienced starter the Yankees have, and his knowledge of the league, its hitters, its teams and their tendencies, and the daily pressures of performing inside the walls of Yankee Stadium allows Joe Girardi to have a man capable of winning twelve to fifteen games and continually turning the rotation back over to the top. If the Yankees fulfill their potential and reach the post season, Pettitte brings an invaluable level of experience equaled only by those few players on the roster who were part of the Yankee supremacy in the late 90s. With his career playoff record, he practically exceeds all four other starters' combined post season appearances, and this knowledge can only serve to ease the tension around a pitching staff that unquestionably bear the burden come the American League Division Series if the big bats such as Alex Rodriguez turn into wooden Rip Van Winkles as they have in the past.

Therefore, although Pettitte does not bring the excitement that Texiera, Sabathia, and Burnett have generated, he does something more valuable and often lost in New York. He unintentionally honors the concept of loyalty and commitment in an age that seems to embrace disloyalty and encourage a "me first" approach. Watching him climb onto the hill, becoming the epicenter of a infield that boasts Rodriguez, Posada, Jeter, Cano, and Texiera, will let Yankee fans not only feel the energy the future includes, but also sense the nostalgia of the past, an idea that has always been a critical part to the Yankee mystique and lore.

So, when the bleachers creatures begin to roll call the names of their beloved Yankees, that familiar chant of "An-dy-Pe-ttitte" will once again reverberate around a place he has always wanted to call home, and the New York Yankees are far better for recognizing that.