Andy Pettitte Announces Retirement

New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte will announced that he will retire after 18 seasons in the Major Leagues on Friday.

Pettitte, who is a member of the “Core Four” with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Jorge Posada, has “spent 15 of his 18 years in the league with the Yankees, playing from 2004-06 with his hometown Houston Astros. He retired in 2010 but returned to the Yankees last year.”

“I’ve reached the point where I know that I’ve left everything I have out there on that field. The time is right. I’ve exhausted myself, mentally and physically, and that’s exactly how I want to leave this game,” he said in a statement. “One of the things I struggled with in making this announcement now was doing anything to take away from Mariano’s day on Sunday. It is his day. He means so much to me, and has meant so much to my career that I would just hate to somehow take the attention away from him.”

He is “three-time All-Star with 255 career wins” and has won, like the the rest of the “Core Four,” won five World Series with the Yankees. Pettitte is also “the all-time leader in postseason victories with 19.”

Pettitte is scheduled to make his final Yankee Stadium start Sunday, the same day the Yankees plan to honor Mariano Rivera, who is also retiring after this season. Pettitte’s “last start of the season would come in Houston.” The only blemish on Pettitte’s record may be his admission that he used human-growth hormone to recover from an elbow injury in 2002.

With Pettitte’s imminent retirement, only Jeter remains from the “Core Four,” the group of Yankees that came up through the Minor Leagues together and helped establish the Yankee dynasty from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.