2009 Yankees: Aging Andy Pettitte Turns Back the Clock in Dominant Outing

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. Today, Andy Pettitte came oh-so-close to immortality as he had a perfect game alive in the seventh inning before it ended, a magnificent performance for the 37-year-old who remains the franchise’s all-time strikeout leader.

BALTIMORE (Aug. 31, 2009) - Jerry Hairston is the very definition of what a Major League Baseball journeyman looks like, which stands to reason because that was the Hairston family ethos.

Jerry’s grandfather, Sam Hairston, was a good but not great Negro Leagues player in the late 1940s who was one of the first Blacks to play for the Chicago White Sox when he got into four games in 1951, then never made it back there as he spent the next nine years toiling in the minors before retiring at age 40.

Sam’s oldest son, John, was a career minor leaguer whose lone MLB time was four at bats during three appearances for the 1969 Cubs, but his youngest son Jerry cobbled together an 859-game MLB career spread across 14 years, all but 51 of those games spent with the White Sox, though the most plate appearances he ever had in one year was 274 in 1975.

And then Sam’s grandsons, Jerry’s boys, made it three generations of Hairstons in the big league as Scott played 923 games in 13 seasons with six teams, and Jerry, who is four years older, played 1,442 games in 16 years with nine teams, most of that as a bench and/or platoon player.

No Hairston ever made an All-Star team, and the only World Series ring in the family vault is owned by Jerry Jr. because he happened to get traded by the Reds to the Yankees on July 31, 2009 and he became one of Joe Girardi’s reliable bench options through the end of the year including in the postseason.

“You look at players who grew up around the game, and they definitely benefit from that,” Hairston told the New York Times shortly after the trade to the Bronx. “Some guys like Ken Griffey Jr. or Barry Bonds become superstars, but a lot of guys like Aaron Boone, myself, Nick Swisher, we realize that not everybody can be a superstar, and we have to do whatever the team wants. I do feel like I fit well here right away, and what a great clubhouse.”

Because of that transaction, Hairston - who played a couple minor league seasons for the Red Wings in Rochester when he was in the Orioles’ system - found himself in a terribly inopportune situation on the night of Aug. 31 at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

Girardi decided that third baseman Alex Rodriguez needed a night off, so he started Hairston in his place against the last-place Orioles. And in the bottom of the seventh inning, Hairston booted a routine ground ball off the bat of Adam Jones with two outs and the Yankees clinging to a 2-0 lead.

Ordinarily, not too big of a big deal. But this actually was a big deal. A very big deal.

Andy Pettitte had retired the first 20 Orioles and it should have been 21, so when Hairston bobbled the ball and Jones reached base safely, there went the best chance Pettitte ever had of throwing a perfect game during his 18-year career.

“I don’t how many big leaguers there are, 750 or 725. Nobody feels worse than I do,” said Hairston. “I just flat out missed it.”

The chances of Pettitte finishing the perfect game probably weren’t great. The very next batter, Nick Markakis, singled on an 0-2 pitch to end the no-hit bid. And then in the eighth, Pettitte gave up a solo homer to Melvin Mora which cost him a chance for a shutout, though he did get credit for the Yankees’ 5-1 victory, his 12th of the year.

Still, Hairston was sick to his stomach about his role in everything. “It’s baseball, it happens, but I just wish I could have that one back,” he said. “It’s kind of tough to swallow. The way Pettitte was throwing, I really wanted him to do it. All of us did.”

Not surprisingly, the first guy who told him not to beat himself up was Pettitte.

“Andy was great about it,” said Hairston, who actually made a beautiful bare-handed play on a slow roller to get an out in the sixth to keep the perfect game alive. “He was kind of funny. He was like, ‘You took the pressure off me.’ He goes, ‘If I haven’t thrown a no-hitter by now, then I’m not going to do it.’ He said he didn’t want to throw nine innings anyway. That’s what type of attitude he has.”

Pettitte was asked if he’d ever thrown a no-hitter in the minors or before turning pro and he said, “I don’t believe so. You know what, maybe in Little League. I was pretty good in Little League.”

Against the Orioles he was masterful for the first 6.2 innings. “When you get as far as he did tonight, you start counting outs,” said Girardi, who was one of Pettitte’s catchers when he won 21 games and finished second in the Cy Young voting in 1996, the year the Yankees won their first World Series since 1978.

Pettitte was more upset about losing the no-hitter because he got ahead of Markakis but in trying to waste his third pitch to see if the lefty swinger would chase, it stayed over the plate and Markakis slapped it into left field for a clean hit.

“I had him 0-2 and I was really just trying to throw a ball,” Pettitte said. “I was trying to throw a ball up and out of the zone. I haven’t seen the replay, but I guess I left it too much on the plate. He’s a great hitter. He’s a tough out, always.”

Pettitte retired Nolan Reimold to get out of the jam and preserve the 2-0 lead, and then in the eighth the Yankees blew the game open. Nick Swisher had homered in the third and doubled home Robinson Cano in the fifth to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. Derek Jeter started the eighth with a double, Johnny Damon singled him home, and after a Mark Teixiera double, Cano ripped a two-out, two-run double to make it 5-0.

Once the lead was extended, Girardi stuck with Pettitte even after Mora led off the bottom of the eighth with his homer and he eventually finished the inning at 104 pitches, 73 of which were strikes, his first eight-inning outing since July 20, 2008.

“I can’t remember having that good of a game with him,” said Jorge Posada, who had a special bond with Pettitte because they came up every step of the way together in the minor leagues. In New York they combined for a 101-50 record as battery mates, and fittingly, on an August weekend in 2015, both had their numbers retired in Monument Park.

“It’s neat for me to be able to do something like that this late in my career,” Pettitte said. “There’s not a whole lot that gets me excited. More than anything, I’m glad we were able to get the win.”

Here’s how the rest of Week 21 went for the Yankees:

• Sept. 1: A.J. Burnett got knocked around for six runs and the Yankees and Orioles were tied at 6-6 when Swisher and Eric Hinske hit back-to-back homers in the seventh for the deciding three runs in a 9-6 victory.

• Sept. 2: The Yankees completed a three-game sweep in Baltimore with a 10-2 victory, though the game was only 3-2 entering the ninth. That’s when the Yankees put up seven runs on seven hits, the big knock being a two-run bases loaded single by A-Rod that made it 5-2. From there, it was just piling on.

• Sept. 3: The Yankees moved on to Toronto for a four-game set and won the opener 10-5. They scored four times in the first, three coming on Hideki Matsui’s bases loaded single, the third run coming when right fielder Travis Snider booted the ball. And then after the Blue Jays got within 7-5, A-Rod and Posada homered to put it away.

• Sept. 4: Roy Halladay had a no-hitter into the sixth before Ramiro Pena doubled, but that wound up being the lone hit as he finished off a 6-0 shutout with nine strikeouts to snap the Yankees’ seven-game winning streak. “He showed us tonight why he’s been the best pitcher in the league,” said Johnny Damon.

• Sept. 5: Pettitte pitched six solid innings for his 13th victory, Teixeira and Cano homered and Jeter inched closer to becoming the Yankees’ all-time hits leader in a 6-4 victory.

• Sept. 6: The Blue Jays earned a series split as they crushed Sergio Mitre for 11 runs in a 14-8 laugher. Mitre, the Yankees’ weakest link as the No. 5 starter, saw his ERA climb to 7.02 and it all but guaranteed he was not going to have a roster spot in the postseason.

NEXT SATURDAY: Derek Jeter achieved pretty much everything a player could possibly achieve in his career, and one that certainly stands out along with the five World Series rings was becoming the Yankees’ career hits leader, surpassing Lou Gehrig.