Pettitte staying with Yankees

NEW YORK (AP) — Andy Pettitte’s only thought was to stay with the New York Yankees. He had no interest in returning to his hometown Houston Astros.

Still, the 36-year-old left-hander was bothered when the Yankees wanted to cut his salary from $16 million to $10 million.

“Heck, the bottom line is I’m a man, and I guess it does take a shot at your pride a little bit,” he said. “But when you put all that aside, I wanted to play for the New York Yankees and, you know, that was the bottom line. I wanted to be there. I wanted to play in that new stadium.”

After months of stalled negotiations, Pettitte and the Yankees agreed Monday to a $5.5 million, one-year contract. While the guaranteed money is less than half New York’s original $10 million offer, he can make an additional $6.5 million in bonuses: $4.5 million based on innings and $2 million based on days on the active roster. He would earn the entire amount if he pitches 210 innings and doesn’t go on the disabled list.

“If in fact Andy does in 2009 what he’s done before, he’ll actually make more money, so in that case we would have no regrets,” said the pitcher’s agent, Randy Hendricks. “If things would go wrong, we might be in position to say maybe we should have taken the left fork in the road instead of the right fork in the road. But that is, as Andy said, part of life and part of negotiations.”

Tags: mlb, baseball, yankees, pettitte