So, you want to know why I'm not devastated that Andy Pettitte turned his back on the Yankees in favor of his hometown Houston Astros? I'll tell you.

Oh sure, when I first heard the news, gleefully delivered by a Boston talk radio announcer (I live in Cambridge, Mass.), my heart sank. Why, I wondered, would the Yankees be very close to a contract with the guy who lost both his World Series starts (David Wells, who had to leave after the first inning of one of them) but have lollygagged on re-signing Pettitte, who they had exclusive negotiating rights to but allowed them to expire without ever seriously sitting down with the pitcher or his agents? Why would you let the winningest lefthander of his generation walk away? Why would you even let him THINK about doing so?

But then, my natural Yankee fan protection instincts kicked in. We Yankees fans, as a breed, seem to have the ability to block out certain things, and to rationalize others. For example, I keep forgetting we didn't win the World Series in 2001. In fact, I keep forgetting what happened this year, too. The Boone home run sort of obliterated everything that came before it, and after... (This is the opposite of Red Sox fans, who obsess about every little detail of their agonizing defeats--and every defeat IS agonizing--picking at the wounds until they scar...)

When it comes to rationalization, here's what I'm telling myself about Pettitte. You see, it's all about whether Pettitte really wanted to come back to the Yankees. If he had, then he would have just been using Houston as a bargaining chip to drive the price up. He would have given the Yankees a legitimate shot at signing him during the winter meetings, which is when they said they planned to focus on him. Instead, he signed with Houston and announced it on the eve of the winter meetings, pre-empting the Yankees' try.

That, to me, sounds like a guy who really wanted to go to Houston. And why would we want a guy who didn't want to stay? If Pettitte has decided he has had enough of the pressure cooker of New York--and has enough World Series rings--then he's not the pitcher we once knew. He's not the guy you want out there in that pressure situation. Yes, he once was, as recently as two months ago, he was the go-to guy to stop the bleeding and keep the Yankee ship on course... (*blitz! kreegle! don't think about that!*) ...but he must be done with that. He must feel he's done it enough times he has nothing left to prove. He must be thinking to himself, "hey, I got a great World Series legacy, and I probably won't make the Hall of Fame anyway..."

Time to go home and play with the kids (he has at least four), be the hometown hero, and rest on his laurels.

Of course, come March/April he's going to wake up and discover he's in the national league, where the hitting style is different, and where he will have to bat and run the bases. He'll be out of the Yankee organization for the first time in his career, away from Mel Stottlemyre for the first time since making the bigs. He'll be pitching in a notorious homer dome. I'm not exactly picturing it as all lazy days and green pastures for Mr. Pettitte.

Not that I wish him ill. I'll remember him as one of a generation of home-grown champions in the dynasty that included Jeter, Posada, and Mariano. I wish him well. It's just too bad that he felt now was the time to leave that all behind...

So there you have it. I'm deluded, I know, but it keeps me from being upset. I've rationalized Pettitte's motivation to the extreme that I have concluded that if he wanted to be a Yankee, he would still be one now, and if he didn't want to be a Yankee, then it was time to get rid of him anyway. I'm fine with that.

On the other hand, if he convinces Roger to come out of retirement to pitch for Houston, now THAT would make me mad.