Yankee brass feel duped after giving Andy Pettitte $16 million

Sunday, February 17th 2008, 4:00 AM

PORT ST. LUCIE - Monday, the man in whom the Yankees placed all their eggs in one basket last December, arrives in camp carrying far more baggage than anyone anticipated and, because of this, Hank Steinbrenner and the rest of the high command can only hope and pray Andy Pettitte isn't in fact a basket case.

While Pettitte might be acclaimed as "St. Andy" by the blathering bureaucrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for what they feel was the forthrightness in the sworn testimony he gave them regarding his involvement with human growth hormone, I can assure you he is now regarded as something else by Yankee officials. How about disingenuous for starters? Or duplicitous?

The fact is, Hank Steinbrenner has a right to feel Pettitte duped him when on the eve of the winter meetings in Nashville, the quiet and sensitive 35-year old lefty called GM Brian Cashman to inform him he was ready to accept the Yankees' standing one-year, $16 million offer. At the time, there was elation all around, especially from Cashman, who used Pettitte's "I shall return" proclamation as the incentive for walking away from a deal for the Twins' Johan Santana - a deal he never wanted to make. With Pettitte taking up $16 million in payroll, the Yankees could no longer afford Santana, Cashman argued, and Hal Steinbrenner, Hank's partner and the primary financial expert in the business, agreed.

"Take your choice, guys," Hal reportedly told the group of Yankee higher-ups in a meeting on the Santana deal prior to Cashman's departure for the winter meetings. "Pettitte or Santana?"

I'm told that in addition to Hank, VP of scouting "Stick" Michael and team president Randy Levine, who handles all the big contracts, wanted to go ahead with the Santana deal anyway. In the end, Hank reluctantly deferred to his brother and Cashman and the baseball people. But when he did, he had no idea of the scope of Pettitte's involvement in baseball's steroids scandal. He knew Pettitte was going to be mentioned in the Mitchell Report, but he had no reason to believe it was going to be any more than in the context of using the same trainer as Roger Clemens. He didn't know Pettitte was going to admit to having taken HGH at least three times and that the last time he took it, he got it from his father, Tom, who got it from a trainer at a gym in Pasadena, Tex., near Pettitte's home in Deer Park called 1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness.

Hank Steinbrenner didn't know that Pettitte had had conversations with Roger Clemens, his close friend and former teammate, about using HGH and that he would offer this up as part of his testimony to the House committee. Hank didn't know that the trainer at the local gym who dispensed the illegal HGH to Tom Pettitte was a relative of Pettitte's wife, Laura, who herself became involved in this mess when she offered corroborating testimony about Andy's account of those conversations with Clemens.

In short, Hank Steinbrenner didn't know Andy Pettitte, whom he welcomed back for $16 million last December at the expense of pursuing a deal for Santana. He didn't know he was this much of a participant in the baseball steroids investigation and was this much involved in a gym that could become a part of a federal investigation now that this is all coming out. He didn't know any of this because Andy Pettitte didn't tell him.

Had Hank known this, do you think he would have been so willing and eager to bring Pettitte back?

"I'm not going to comment on that right now," Hank said to me in a phone conversation. "All I know is, we never had that conversation."

In grabbing the $16 million, conveniently at the time the Yankees were getting ready to make their offer for Santana, didn't Pettitte have an obligation to at least tell them about the HGH injections and his father's role in helping him get the drug? You can make the case that maybe Cashman should have pressed Pettitte about what might be forthcoming in the Mitchell Report, especially since everyone around the Yankees knew the fragile nature of Pettitte's persona and how any tinge of controversy and scandal might affect him mentally.

Just look at his pleadings to the committee interrogators at the end of his deposition, when he asked to be excused from testifying at the hearing because he couldn't bear having to talk on national TV about his father's involvement in getting him the HGH. It's all out there now and it's not going to go away. If anything, if there is a probe of the gym and the people who frequent it, it's going to get worse. And those who know Pettitte best wonder how this is all going to affect him.

"I feel for Andy," Joe Torre was saying the other day in Vero Beach, "and I know in the past he's always enjoyed the fact that we always had someone else the press could talk to other than him. Now it's all him and I know that's going to be very uncomfortable for him."

Mike Mussina went even farther the other day in Yankee camp when he said: "I don't know how Andy is going to handle this. However it all happens, he's still got to go out there and pitch and I don't think he's going to be able to go out there and do his job if he has to answer to these questions all season long."

Who knows? Maybe in these extra few days the Yankees have allowed him to take before reporting to camp the sensitive Pettitte has decided to retire rather than have to publicly answer any more questions about his family and their involvement in the "1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness" gym. Even if he were to walk away from the $16 million, however, it will be of no consolation to Hank Steinbrenner, who is finding out all of these things about Andy Pettitte two months too late.

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