Andy Pettitte didn’t need the assistance of the pinstripes, like other former Yankees, whose bellies hung over their belts. When he took the mound for his first Old-Timers’ Day appearance, the franchise’s all-time leader in strikeouts still possessed a striking resemblance to the southpaw who retired five years ago.
Pettitte had turned 46 two days earlier, and happily jogged around the diamond he once owned; taking extra at-bats in the exhibition contest, in place of exhausted, elder returnees.
But Pettitte is also old enough to be a new, beaming grandfather; to have debuted with the Yankees nearly two years before Gleyber Torres was born.