2) Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated.
3) WasWatching's Steve Lombardi.
4) Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.
5) Ronald Blum of Yahoo! Sports.
6) Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.
From Justice's blog entry:
That sounds about right.Andy Pettitte stuck his hand out to shake mine after one of the toughest hours of his life. I said the first thing that came to mind.
''You're a role model,'' I told him. ''I don't know if you were a role model before, but you're a role model now.''
The Andy Pettitte you saw on television Monday afternoon is exactly the Andy Pettitte I know. He doesn't have an insincere bone in his body. Has he made mistakes? Sure he has. That's true of most of us.
Andy is a man of such decency and humility that it's impossible not to admire the things he has attempted to stand for. He admitted his mistakes and asked for forgiveness. What else can he do?
He's a role model for every player that used illegal performance-enhancing drugs. He's going to find out we are a forgiving people. He's also more than that. He's a person that has attempted to do the right thing his entire life. He has messed up some and will mess up again.
I don't know where those injections of human growth hormone will be viewed in the wake of his entire career, but for me, it's going to be a very small part. He did it. He regrets it. Next question. It was telling that he would have let the Yankees out of his 2008 contract. He was being honest about that.
It was telling that Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada showed up to hug Pettitte when his news conference was over. They know Pettitte well enough to know how much he has suffered these last few weeks. They also know how he hates being the center of attention.This post isn't to condone what Pettitte did. He cheated. That said, he has done the best he can to admit his mistake, ask for forgiveness and keep going. He did exactly the right thing. His family and friends should be proud of him.
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