NEW YORK (AP) — An unusual thing happened to the New York Yankees this winter: They lost.

Sure, the billion-dollar franchise occasionally loses in the postseason. What the Yankees never do is fail in the offseason.

That is until now.

After being beaten by Cliff Lee and the younger, more hungry-looking Texas Rangers in the American League championship series, the Yankees lost out on Lee, this year’s most coveted free agent. They lost in the public eye during Derek Jeter’s contract negotiations and, most importantly, the Yankees lost to the rival Boston Red Sox in offseason moves.

Then, right before training camp opened, rotation stalwart Andy Pettitte retired — leaving the Core Four a tiring trio.

“Every year’s separate, every year’s a challenge,” Jeter said. “There’s nothing more this year as opposed to any other year.”

Despite the Captain’s ever-positive outlook, the Yankees have sounded more like a bickering franchise on the decline than the powerhouse of the AL East.

What should be a feel-good season celebrating Jeter as he becomes the first player in a Yankees uniform to reach 3,000 hits — he’s 74 away — got off to a rough start when General Manager Brian Cashman took several shots in the tabloids at the shortstop during surprisingly contentious contract negotiations.

Cashman also uncharacteristically exclaimed publicly he was against giving AL saves leader Rafael Soriano a $35 million, three-year contract — and forfeiting a first-round draft pick to the right-hander’s former team, the Tampa bay Rays — to be Mariano Rivera’s setup man in the one big free-agent move by the Yankees.

And heading into New York’s first full season without George Steinbrenner looming over every aspect of the organization, Hank Steinbrenner proved he has the same bluster as his dad but little of the bite. Jeter laughed off Hank’s comments in the first week of spring training about unnamed players building mansions instead of focusing on winning last year. Jeter just completed a 30,000 square foot house in Tampa, Fla., called “St. Jetersburg” by the locals.

“There’s always things said around here, there’s always stories,” Jeter said.

The negativity could carry over to the regular season if the Yankees don’t perform on the field where there are significant questions for the ballclub that accepts nothing less than a World Series championship.

The most glaring problems lie in the shaky pitching staff.

Coming off a season in which A.J. Burnett and Javier Vazquez were dreadful, the Yankees went hard after Lee, who has dominated them the past two postseasons. He chose the Phillies.

The last time such a high profile player spurned New York’s very public pitch was before the 1993 season, when Greg Maddux chose the Braves over Broadway.

With Pettitte announcing his retirement two weeks before training camp opened, the Yankees — and new pitching coach Larry Rothschild — were left with a three-man rotation and only one sure thing heading into camp: CC Sabathia (21-7, 3.18 ERA).

Burnett, the No. 2 starter, bombed last season, going 10-15 with a 5.26 ERA and a league-leading 19 hit batters, 16 wild pitches, two cut hands thanks to an angry clubhouse outburst after a poor start and one mysterious black eye. The $82.5 million pitcher was skipped over in the AL division playoffs.

Phil Hughes was a bright spot winning 18 games and an All-Star selection in his first full season as a starter. But the 24-year-old faded after the break: 7-6 with one victory in relief.

One side effect from not winning the Lee sweepstakes and Pettitte’s departure: New York will open the season with a payroll less than $200 million for the first time since 2007.

Too late to secure another topflight free agent, Cashman went cheap, bringing in aging All-Stars Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon to compete with youngster Ivan Nova and Sergio Mitre for the final two spots in the rotation.

New York (CNN) — Andy Pettitte, whose pitching helped the New York Yankees to five World Series championships, announced his retirement from Major League Baseball at a news conference Friday morning at Yankee Stadium.

“I’m done with baseball,” he said. “I’m going to not be pitching for the Yankees every fifth day anymore.”

“He had a really hard time making this decision,” Pettitte’s wife, Laura, added.

Pettitte explained that it was not his physical condition that led to his decision, but that his “heart is not where it needs to be.”

Pettitte thanked the Steinbrenner family, which owns the team, and the Yankee organization for not only allowing him to start his career in pinstripes, but also for bringing him back to New York.

“The last four years I can honestly tell you have been amazing,” he said.

The 38-year-old left-hander fan favorite joined the Yankees in 1995, the same year captain Derek Jeter and closer Mariano Rivera started playing for the storied franchise. He helped the team to four World Series championships before going to the Houston Astros in 2004, and then returned to New York, helping the team to another championship in 2009.

Overall, Pettitte appeared in eight World Series — seven as a Yankee and one as an Astro.

After 16 years in the major leagues — 13 with the Yankees and three with the Astros — Pettitte leaves the majors with 240 career wins and a 3.88 ERA. In Yankees franchise history, he ranks second in strikeouts and starts, third in wins, fourth in innings pitched and eight in appearances with 405.

He also holds the major league record for 19 postseason victories. He was a three-time All-Star, in 1996, 2001 and 2010, and was the most valuable player of the 2001 American League Championship Series.

“I am looking forward to this next chapter in my life,” he said Friday. “And right now I don’t want it to be anything except hanging out with my family.”

Pettitte’s career was not without controversy.

In December 2007 he was included by a group led by former Sen. George Mitchell in a report on illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Pettitte was among dozens named in its findings and the report became the basis of a hearing two months later by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

He later admitted to using growth hormones in 2002 and 2004.

In a sworn statement to a House committee, Pettitte also said that seven-time Cy Young Award winner and close friend Roger Clemens, who was also named in the report, admitted that he used the hormone during a conversation the two had in 1999 or 2000.

Pettitte denied that this has affected his decision to retire.

“I would never let that interfere with a life decision I am going to make for me and my family,” he said.

The two men, both native Texans, were close friends before the fallout from the federal investigation. Clemens was indicted on six charges last August — one count of obstruction of justice, three of making false statements, and two of perjury — for lying to Congress during that 2008 hearing, when he denied using steroids, growth hormones or other such performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens’ criminal trial starts in July.

February 4, 2011

12:49 a.m.

New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte holds up the championship trophy after Game 6 of the 2009 World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies in New York. Pettitte plans to announce his retirement Friday at a news conference at Yankee Stadium, a person familiar with the arrangements told The Associated Press.

NEW YORK — Andy Pettitte is going ahead with his decision to retire, leaving the New York Yankees with two huge holes in what appears to be a rather wobbly starting rotation.

The team scheduled a Friday morning news conference at Yankee Stadium for Pettitte to announce the choice he had been leaning toward making since the end of last season.

“I don’t think enough people know that he’s still the leader of this pitching staff until today,” former Yankees right fielder Paul O’Neill said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

A five-time World Series champion, Pettitte became the third-winningest pitcher in team history.

“Andy was probably the consummate team player,” former Yankees manager Joe Torre said. “He’s been a huge favorite of mine because he’s such a standup guy, and he hasn’t changed from day one. He’s a great teammate, and I think that’s why he won so many games. The guys that play behind him understand how intense he is, and it becomes contagious.”

Pettitte won’t disappear from public view entirely. He is expected to be a witness this summer at the trial of former teammate Roger Clemens, indicted on charges he lied to a congressional committee when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

Pettitte admitted using human growth hormone and said Clemens told him he had used HGH. Clemens testified Pettitte didn’t remember the conversation correctly.

Clemens said Thursday he hasn’t been able to speak with Pettitte lately because of the ongoing case. But he insisted he held no hard feelings toward Pettitte and congratulated him on his career.

“If I know the age of his oldest one, I think he’s a freshman or sophomore in high school, so it’s a crucial time to be around. I’m sure that weighed on him for a number of years,” said Clemens, speaking to reporters before a baseball banquet in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Pettitte’s retirement creates a great uncertainty for the Yankees. New York has no proven starters behind CC Sabathia, Phil Hughes and A.J. Burnett, who struggled during the second half of last season.

Having failed to sign free agent Cliff Lee, New York has agreed to minor league contracts with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia in recent weeks, trying to find more options for a fourth and fifth starter in addition to youngster Ivan Nova and Sergio Mitre. The Yankees also are interested in signing Kevin Millwood, a person familiar those conversations said Thursday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because talks are ongoing.

Pettitte finished 240-138 with a 3.88 ERA in 16 major league seasons. He excelled in the postseason, setting a major league record for wins by going 19-10 with a 3.83 ERA.

“You’re going to miss him taking the mound every fifth day. You’re going to miss having him as your No. 1 or No. 2 starter going into the playoffs,” said O’Neill, a former teammate and current broadcaster for the Yankees’ YES Network. “But you’re really going to miss just how he helps younger players and how he helps pitching staffs as a veteran pitcher who’s really been though pretty much everything as a New York Yankee.”

A member of the “Core Four” along with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada, Pettitte helped the Yankees win World Series titles in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009.

“The Yankees have been fortunate to have him representing the organization both on and off the field,” said Jeter, the team captain, “More importantly it’s been an honor to get to know him as a person, and I consider him family.”

Pettitte first came up to the Yankees in 1995, the year before the start of the team’s latest era of dominance.

“I liked the guy from the first moment I met him,” Whitey Ford said. “After watching him a few times, I really thought he could be a great pitcher.

Pettitte spent 13 seasons with the Yankees, interrupting his career in New York to play for his hometown Houston Astros from 2004-06. He was a three-time All-Star, earning the honor in 1996, 2001 and last year, and was a 20-game winner in 1996 and 2003 when he twice went 21-8.

“He was a fighter and all about winning, and he was respected by every person in the clubhouse,” Rivera said.

In both 1998 and 2009, Pettitte won the World Series finale.

“Without him we don’t win all four World Series,” former Yankees first baseman Tino Martinez said. “Since I’ve been retired, I’m always asked, ’Who would you have pitch a World Series Game 7?’ And I always say, ’Andy Pettitte.”’

Pettitte was 11-3 with a 3.28 ERA in 21 starts last season. His season was limited by a strained left groin that caused him to go on the disabled list from July 19 to Sept. 19.

“I’m really sad that Andy is going to retire,” Posada said. “He was so much more than a teammate to me — he was one of my closest friends.”

Pettitte had said he increasingly felt the tug to return to Deer Park, Texas, and his wife and four children. Once the school year ended, his family traveled to New York where they could be together during homestands, but the distance from his loved ones now has trumped whatever desire he had to climb higher in the Yankees record book.

“Now it seems like he’s at the point of his life where he’s not willing to make that commitment,” O’Neill said. “He’s had a wonderful career. Fans have to respect what he’s going to go do now, which is to live his life and let his kids live their lives.”

Pettitte leaves with 203 wins for the Yankees, trailing only Ford (236) and Red Ruffing (231). He is second to Ford in strikeouts (1,823) and starts (396).

“One of the tops the Yankees ever had,” Yogi Berra said. “He’s always a guy you always depend on, and we’re gonna miss him.”

The clock was ticking, the scout for the New York Yankees was throwing everything he had at a junior college kid named Andy Pettitte, and still the team and the prospect remained a lousy 20 grand apart.

Pettitte wanted $80,000 to sign in May 1991, and Joe Robison was told to go no higher than $60,000. They were meeting inside the Baton Rouge, La., home of Pettitte’s grandmother, sitting on opposite sides of Grandma’s kitchen table with the Yankees hours away from losing the rights to the pitcher they’d picked in the 22nd round of the 1990 draft.

Robison had been the baseball coach at the Air Force Academy, a major whom George Steinbrenner preferred to call a general. The major couldn’t lose this fight. He called his scouting director, Bill Livesey, and told him he needed some extra cash to close the deal.

“Don’t show up here if you don’t get that kid signed,” Livesey told him.

So Robison signed Pettitte right there at the kitchen table, just as Grandma brought the scout a cup of coffee. “You just spent your money wisely, young man,” she told Robison, who in turn told her grandson that a lot of hard work and a little luck could lead to a charmed baseball life.

“Andy, when you reach 40 years old,” the scout told Pettitte, “you’re not going to have to do another lick of work in your life. You’ll have enough money to do nothing except watch your kids grow up and go fishing.”

On Thursday, the Yankees announced their man had beaten Robison’s prophecy by two years. At 38, Pettitte is leaving baseball and the Bronx as not only one of the greatest Yankees.

He’s retiring as one of the toughest, too.

That’s a hell of a legacy, especially when one considers that Steinbrenner nearly traded Pettitte to Philadelphia during the 1999 season because he didn’t think his stoic left-hander was tough enough.

Steinbrenner favored players and managers who projected fire instead of ice, and he would mistake Pettitte’s neighborly demeanor as a sign of weakness. On the July night in Fenway Park when “The Boss” backed off, when Brian Cashman and Joe Torre finally convinced him it was a bad idea to deal a lefty in his prime, Pettitte allowed the competitor within to boil to the surface.

“Whatever they want to do,” he sniffed at his locker. “But if they keep me around, I hope the owner wants me here, too.”

Pettitte won seven of his final 10 decisions, went 2-0 in the playoffs and then returned in 2000 to go 21-9, including the postseason, to help the Yankees win their third consecutive title.

So no, he wasn’t too timid or too soft. In Game 5 of the 1996 World Series, when John Smoltz was as great as John Smoltz has ever been, Pettitte was tough enough to be one run better.

He was strong enough to close out the 1998 World Series in San Diego while his father was recovering from double-bypass surgery back in his Texas home. He was durable enough to post double-figure victories in 15 of his 16 seasons with the Yankees and Astros. He was clutch enough to win more postseason games (19) than any man dead or alive, and to go 4-0 in his fifth and final championship run.

“Andy was always a guy who wanted to be on the winning team,” said his junior college coach at San Jacinto, Wayne Graham, the man who convinced Pettitte to melt 25 pounds of baby fat off his 6-foot-5 frame and to temper his extreme emotional outbursts.

That’s right — a young Pettitte had a little John McEnroe in him, even if his future Boss, Steinbrenner, never would have believed it. Graham had played 20 games for the overwhelmed ’64 Mets, spending most of his time on the bench listening to Casey Stengel’s running commentary on pitching, hitting and life.

“Casey was so intuitive about people and the human dynamic,” Graham said, and at San Jacinto, the former Met tried to make the same cosmic connection with his players. Early in their one season together, Graham kept seeing Pettitte slam down his glove in frustration.

“I thought Andy would be a guy who would break his hand against a dugout wall if he didn’t change,” Graham recalled Thursday. “Nobody wanted to win any worse than he did, and he obviously had great intensity, but I convinced him that self-control would help make him a big league pitcher.”

If self-control put Pettitte in the conversation for the Hall of Fame, one reckless choice might ultimately doom his candidacy. Pettitte admitted to using human growth hormone, of course, and his explanation — he said he was merely trying to expedite his recovery from injury — wasn’t any more redeeming than the explanations offered by other performance-enhancing cheats.

But Pettitte did confess his not-so-venial sin, and he did provide congressional testimony against his friend and mentor, Roger Clemens, that former Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia described as truthful and critical to a federal grand jury’s indictment of Clemens.

Even at his lowest moment, Pettitte was hailed for his integrity and credibility.

This helps explain why millions of Yankees fans felt depressed Thursday afternoon, when losing Andy Pettitte hurt in a way that losing Cliff Lee could not.

“I really admired him,” Whitey Ford said by phone. “I thought Andy was a great pitcher, and I’m sorry he had to retire.”

The old scout who signed him, Joe Robison, felt the same way. He first stumbled upon Pettitte at Deer Park High School, where two dozen scouts gathered to see a right-hander named Kirk Dressendorfer, soon to be a first-round pick of the Oakland A’s.

Robison noticed a tall lefty warming up in the bullpen to pitch the second game of the doubleheader. “And I knew the Yankees liked big lefties a lot more than they liked little righties,” the retired Robison recalled Thursday. “At the end of the first game, I walked to the parking lot with the rest of the scouts as if I was leaving, too, but after they drove off, I went back to watch Andy.”

Pettitte would win 240 games and five championships, or 237 more games and five more championships than Dressendorfer would win. Along the way, the man who nearly traded Pettitte, Boss Steinbrenner, found time to thank the scout for doubling back at Deer Park High.

“You got me a good one,” Steinbrenner told Robison. “Now go find me another one.”

It’s going to be a while before the Yankees find another Andrew Eugene Pettitte.

Follow Ian O’Connor on Twitter: @Ian_OConnor

The clock was ticking, the scout for the New York Yankees was throwing everything he had at a junior college kid named Andy Pettitte, and still the team and the prospect remained a lousy 20 grand apart.

Pettitte wanted $80,000 to sign in May 1991, and Joe Robison was told to go no higher than $60,000. They were meeting inside the Baton Rouge, La., home of Pettitte’s grandmother, sitting on opposite sides of Grandma’s kitchen table with the Yankees hours away from losing the rights to the pitcher they’d picked in the 22nd round of the 1990 draft.

Robison had been the baseball coach at the Air Force Academy, a major whom George Steinbrenner preferred to call a general. The major couldn’t lose this fight. He called his scouting director, Bill Livesey, and told him he needed some extra cash to close the deal.

“Don’t show up here if you don’t get that kid signed,” Livesey told him.

So Robison signed Pettitte right there at the kitchen table, just as Grandma brought the scout a cup of coffee. “You just spent your money wisely, young man,” she told Robison, who in turn told her grandson that a lot of hard work and a little luck could lead to a charmed baseball life.

“Andy, when you reach 40 years old,” the scout told Pettitte, “you’re not going to have to do another lick of work in your life. You’ll have enough money to do nothing except watch your kids grow up and go fishing.”

On Thursday, the Yankees announced their man had beaten Robison’s prophecy by two years. At 38, Pettitte is leaving baseball and the Bronx as not only one of the greatest Yankees.

He’s retiring as one of the toughest, too.

That’s a hell of a legacy, especially when one considers that Steinbrenner nearly traded Pettitte to Philadelphia during the 1999 season because he didn’t think his stoic left-hander was tough enough.

Steinbrenner favored players and managers who projected fire instead of ice, and he would mistake Pettitte’s neighborly demeanor as a sign of weakness. On the July night in Fenway Park when “The Boss” backed off, when Brian Cashman and Joe Torre finally convinced him it was a bad idea to deal a lefty in his prime, Pettitte allowed the competitor within to boil to the surface.

“Whatever they want to do,” he sniffed at his locker. “But if they keep me around, I hope the owner wants me here, too.”

Pettitte won seven of his final 10 decisions, went 2-0 in the playoffs and then returned in 2000 to go 21-9, including the postseason, to help the Yankees win their third consecutive title.

So no, he wasn’t too timid or too soft. In Game 5 of the 1996 World Series, when John Smoltz was as great as John Smoltz has ever been, Pettitte was tough enough to be one run better.

He was strong enough to close out the 1998 World Series in San Diego while his father was recovering from double-bypass surgery back in his Texas home. He was durable enough to post double-figure victories in 15 of his 16 seasons with the Yankees and Astros. He was clutch enough to win more postseason games (19) than any man dead or alive, and to go 4-0 in his fifth and final championship run.

“Andy was always a guy who wanted to be on the winning team,” said his junior college coach at San Jacinto, Wayne Graham, the man who convinced Pettitte to melt 25 pounds of baby fat off his 6-foot-5 frame and to temper his extreme emotional outbursts.

That’s right — a young Pettitte had a little John McEnroe in him, even if his future Boss, Steinbrenner, never would have believed it. Graham had played 20 games for the overwhelmed ’64 Mets, spending most of his time on the bench listening to Casey Stengel’s running commentary on pitching, hitting and life.

“Casey was so intuitive about people and the human dynamic,” Graham said, and at San Jacinto, the former Met tried to make the same cosmic connection with his players. Early in their one season together, Graham kept seeing Pettitte slam down his glove in frustration.

“I thought Andy would be a guy who would break his hand against a dugout wall if he didn’t change,” Graham recalled Thursday. “Nobody wanted to win any worse than he did, and he obviously had great intensity, but I convinced him that self-control would help make him a big league pitcher.”

If self-control put Pettitte in the conversation for the Hall of Fame, one reckless choice might ultimately doom his candidacy. Pettitte admitted to using human growth hormone, of course, and his explanation — he said he was merely trying to expedite his recovery from injury — wasn’t any more redeeming than the explanations offered by other performance-enhancing cheats.

But Pettitte did confess his not-so-venial sin, and he did provide congressional testimony against his friend and mentor, Roger Clemens, that former Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia described as truthful and critical to a federal grand jury’s indictment of Clemens.

Even at his lowest moment, Pettitte was hailed for his integrity and credibility.

This helps explain why millions of Yankees fans felt depressed Thursday afternoon, when losing Andy Pettitte hurt in a way that losing Cliff Lee could not.

“I really admired him,” Whitey Ford said by phone. “I thought Andy was a great pitcher, and I’m sorry he had to retire.”

The old scout who signed him, Joe Robison, felt the same way. He first stumbled upon Pettitte at Deer Park High School, where two dozen scouts gathered to see a right-hander named Kirk Dressendorfer, soon to be a first-round pick of the Oakland A’s.

Robison noticed a tall lefty warming up in the bullpen to pitch the second game of the doubleheader. “And I knew the Yankees liked big lefties a lot more than they liked little righties,” the retired Robison recalled Thursday. “At the end of the first game, I walked to the parking lot with the rest of the scouts as if I was leaving, too, but after they drove off, I went back to watch Andy.”

Pettitte would win 240 games and five championships, or 237 more games and five more championships than Dressendorfer would win. Along the way, the man who nearly traded Pettitte, Boss Steinbrenner, found time to thank the scout for doubling back at Deer Park High.

“You got me a good one,” Steinbrenner told Robison. “Now go find me another one.”

It’s going to be a while before the Yankees find another Andrew Eugene Pettitte.

Follow Ian O’Connor on Twitter: @Ian_OConnor

The clock was ticking, the scout for the New York Yankees was throwing everything he had at a junior college kid named Andy Pettitte, and still the team and the prospect remained a lousy 20 grand apart.

Pettitte wanted $80,000 to sign in May 1991, and Joe Robison was told to go no higher than $60,000. They were meeting inside the Baton Rouge, La., home of Pettitte’s grandmother, sitting on opposite sides of Grandma’s kitchen table with the Yankees hours away from losing the rights to the pitcher they’d picked in the 22nd round of the 1990 draft.

Robison had been the baseball coach at the Air Force Academy, a major whom George Steinbrenner preferred to call a general. The major couldn’t lose this fight. He called his scouting director, Bill Livesey, and told him he needed some extra cash to close the deal.

“Don’t show up here if you don’t get that kid signed,” Livesey told him.

So Robison signed Pettitte right there at the kitchen table, just as Grandma brought the scout a cup of coffee. “You just spent your money wisely, young man,” she told Robison, who in turn told her grandson that a lot of hard work and a little luck could lead to a charmed baseball life.

“Andy, when you reach 40 years old,” the scout told Pettitte, “you’re not going to have to do another lick of work in your life. You’ll have enough money to do nothing except watch your kids grow up and go fishing.”

On Thursday, the Yankees announced their man had beaten Robison’s prophecy by two years. At 38, Pettitte is leaving baseball and the Bronx as not only one of the greatest Yankees.

He’s retiring as one of the toughest, too.

That’s a hell of a legacy, especially when one considers that Steinbrenner nearly traded Pettitte to Philadelphia during the 1999 season because he didn’t think his stoic left-hander was tough enough.

Steinbrenner favored players and managers who projected fire instead of ice, and he would mistake Pettitte’s neighborly demeanor as a sign of weakness. On the July night in Fenway Park when “The Boss” backed off, when Brian Cashman and Joe Torre finally convinced him it was a bad idea to deal a lefty in his prime, Pettitte allowed the competitor within to boil to the surface.

“Whatever they want to do,” he sniffed at his locker. “But if they keep me around, I hope the owner wants me here, too.”

Pettitte won seven of his final 10 decisions, went 2-0 in the playoffs and then returned in 2000 to go 21-9, including the postseason, to help the Yankees win their third consecutive title.

So no, he wasn’t too timid or too soft. In Game 5 of the 1996 World Series, when John Smoltz was as great as John Smoltz has ever been, Pettitte was tough enough to be one run better.

He was strong enough to close out the 1998 World Series in San Diego while his father was recovering from double-bypass surgery back in his Texas home. He was durable enough to post double-figure victories in 15 of his 16 seasons with the Yankees and Astros. He was clutch enough to win more postseason games (19) than any man dead or alive, and to go 4-0 in his fifth and final championship run.

“Andy was always a guy who wanted to be on the winning team,” said his junior college coach at San Jacinto, Wayne Graham, the man who convinced Pettitte to melt 25 pounds of baby fat off his 6-foot-5 frame and to temper his extreme emotional outbursts.

That’s right — a young Pettitte had a little John McEnroe in him, even if his future Boss, Steinbrenner, never would have believed it. Graham had played 20 games for the overwhelmed ’64 Mets, spending most of his time on the bench listening to Casey Stengel’s running commentary on pitching, hitting and life.

“Casey was so intuitive about people and the human dynamic,” Graham said, and at San Jacinto, the former Met tried to make the same cosmic connection with his players. Early in their one season together, Graham kept seeing Pettitte slam down his glove in frustration.

“I thought Andy would be a guy who would break his hand against a dugout wall if he didn’t change,” Graham recalled Thursday. “Nobody wanted to win any worse than he did, and he obviously had great intensity, but I convinced him that self-control would help make him a big league pitcher.”

If self-control put Pettitte in the conversation for the Hall of Fame, one reckless choice might ultimately doom his candidacy. Pettitte admitted to using human growth hormone, of course, and his explanation — he said he was merely trying to expedite his recovery from injury — wasn’t any more redeeming than the explanations offered by other performance-enhancing cheats.

But Pettitte did confess his not-so-venial sin, and he did provide congressional testimony against his friend and mentor, Roger Clemens, that former Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia described as truthful and critical to a federal grand jury’s indictment of Clemens.

Even at his lowest moment, Pettitte was hailed for his integrity and credibility.

This helps explain why millions of Yankees fans felt depressed Thursday afternoon, when losing Andy Pettitte hurt in a way that losing Cliff Lee could not.

“I really admired him,” Whitey Ford said by phone. “I thought Andy was a great pitcher, and I’m sorry he had to retire.”

The old scout who signed him, Joe Robison, felt the same way. He first stumbled upon Pettitte at Deer Park High School, where two dozen scouts gathered to see a right-hander named Kirk Dressendorfer, soon to be a first-round pick of the Oakland A’s.

Robison noticed a tall lefty warming up in the bullpen to pitch the second game of the doubleheader. “And I knew the Yankees liked big lefties a lot more than they liked little righties,” the retired Robison recalled Thursday. “At the end of the first game, I walked to the parking lot with the rest of the scouts as if I was leaving, too, but after they drove off, I went back to watch Andy.”

Pettitte would win 240 games and five championships, or 237 more games and five more championships than Dressendorfer would win. Along the way, the man who nearly traded Pettitte, Boss Steinbrenner, found time to thank the scout for doubling back at Deer Park High.

“You got me a good one,” Steinbrenner told Robison. “Now go find me another one.”

It’s going to be a while before the Yankees find another Andrew Eugene Pettitte.

Follow Ian O’Connor on Twitter: @Ian_OConnor