[新聞] Most tense moments for Andy: son's accident

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Most tense moments for Andy: son's accident
BY KAT O'BRIEN

[e-mail]
February 23, 2008

TAMPA, Fla. - Andy Pettitte badly needed some peace and quiet when he took
his family to their ranch in south Texas for their annual Christmas trip.

Less than two weeks had passed since former Yankees trainer Brian McNamee
had said in the Mitchell Report that he injected Pettitte with human growth
hormone, an allegation the pitcher soon admitted was true.

Pettitte calls that sequence of events a "big-time emotional drain," but
what came next was much tougher. His oldest son, Josh, was in a severe
accident in a 4x4 Polaris Ranger Dec. 26.


Josh, 13, was hurt so badly that he had to be transported via helicopter to
San Antonio. His head was split open and required about 50 stitches, he
broke an arm in two places and there was a deep gash above his knee.

Pettitte recalls Josh looking up at him in the emergency room and saying,
"Dad, don't let me die."

Anything else - admitting his own HGH use, testifying before Congress,
testifying that close friend Roger Clemens had used HGH - pales in comparison
to that moment.

"Dad, don't let me die."

That's not a sentence that passes from one's memory easily. Nor does the
frightening image of a bloodied Josh immediately after the accident.

"When I first saw him," Pettitte said Friday, "I thought that he might not
make it ... The initial shock of just seeing your son covered in blood ... "

In a phone interview, Pettitte's wife, Laura, said she was on the scene
of the ATV accident first. She said: "All I could see was his eyes. His
whole head and face were just covered in blood."

Josh did not have a helmet on. That won't happen again, Laura said. During
Andy's hourlong news conference Monday to address his admitted use of HGH,
he took a timeout from the talk of performance-enhancing drugs to urge
parents to make sure their kids wear helmets.

At the time of the crash, Pettitte and the second oldest of his four
children, 9-year-old Jared, were out on the ranch together. Josh, 7-year-old
sister Lexy, and their cousins Mallory and Jenna were on one four-wheeler
when they collided with a four-wheeler driven by one cousin's boyfriend at
a point where two dirt roads met. Each of the vehicles flipped several times,
and Josh was thrown about 30 feet.

"Me and my sister-in-laws were actually on the back porch, and we heard
the crash and saw something flying through the air," said Laura, who has
never been a big fan of the four-wheelers. "All I could do was scream.
It was like my whole body went into shock. In my mind, I thought, my biggest
fear as far as the ranch goes had just taken place."

The ranch is in such a rural area that calling 911 was not an option.
Instead, Laura called Andy. Said Pettitte: "She was screaming, 'Josh
is hurt, Josh is hurt!' ... By the way she was screaming, I knew he was
hurt bad. I got there probably two or three minutes after she called.
I got to where the wreck was, and the vehicles were just demolished."

They already had taken Josh inside, and Pettitte's sister-in-law was holding
a towel against Josh's head to stem the bleeding. Josh was in shock, which
may have lessened his pain.

Josh was the most severely injured. Jenna had broken a hip in multiple
locations, and the other three had various leg injuries. Pettitte says
they are "extremely lucky" the injuries were not more severe. He loaded
everyone into his Suburban and sped to Frio Regional Hospital in Pearsall,
making the 45-minute trip in 30 minutes.

"I was driving, had ice on his head and a towel," Pettitte said. "He was,
like, scalped."

When they reached the hospital, medical crews realized Josh would need more
advanced treatment than they could provide. They called for LifeFlight,
and about 20 minutes later, a helicopter arrived to take Josh to a trauma
center in San Antonio.

"They just started putting him back together," Pettitte said, "stitching his
arm up, stitching his head up, stitching his leg up. That was when I think
it sort of hit him."

That's when Josh made his dad promise not to let him die. Dad, and the
doctors, came through.

Now, nearly two months later, Josh is virtually back to normal, though
Laura said he suffers from some headaches. He's in school again and is even
playing basketball. And his parents are ever so grateful.

"That kind of helped me get everything in perspective," Pettitte said.
"Obviously, it's tough to go through what I went through, but this is my
family. Whenever I'm thinking, oh, woe is me, I'm like, hang on a second,
this doesn't even matter. What matters is my family."

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