Pettitte: 'Mo told me you need to say something'

Chad Jennings | USA TODAY Sports

NEW YORK - Andy Pettitte said he's known since spring training that this would be his last season, and he was planning to announced that decision at the end of the year. It was Mariano Rivera fully convinced him otherwise.

So they'll share the spotlight Sunday, the Yankees and their fans honoring Rivera with a long-planned day to honor the all-time saves leader in his final season. And Pettitte will start the game, his last at Yankee Stadium.

"Obviously Mo was one of the guys that has known for a while that I was done and I was retiring," Pettitte said. "He all along has told me, 'You've got to announce it. You need to say something.' That's just not how I wanted to do it. I had planned on just announcing it at the end of the season, the day the season was over. After me and (media relations director Jason Zillo) talked a little bit, me and Mo had lunch in Toronto and we talked about it. He was just so supportive of it and told me I had to announce it, and that I should. He thinks it's going to make (Sunday) even better.

"To hear him say that, and to feel that way about it, I feel like we're connected you know, in sense. I told him, man, I feel like you know what, now that I've announced it and I've said it I feel like God has kind of worked it out where it's happened this way."

Pettitte, 41, stepped away from the game once before, sitting out the 2011 season before the Yankees lured him back for the 2012 season. He's gone 15-14 with a 3.60 earned-run average for them the past two years, bumping his career totals to 255-152, with a 3.86 ERA over 18 seasons.

Those would give him borderline Hall of Fame credentials, but Pettitte's 2007 acknowledgement that he took human growth hormone in the wake of his inclusion in baseball's Mitchell Report figures to damage his candidacy.

Pettitte, a native of the Houston area, will make his final career start close to home when the Yankees play a season-ending series at Minute Maid Park against the Astros next weekend.

Like Rivera, Pettitte was a major part of the Yankees' five World Series championships, with a record of 19-11 over 14 postseasons, producing more playoff wins than eight other franchises.

Jennings writes for the (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal-News, a Gannett property.