Pettitte headlining SCORE ‘Night With the Stars’ banquet
SCORE International is bringing in a true winner for its “Night With the Stars” fundraising banquet in November — the pitcher with the most postseason wins in major league baseball, in fact.
New York Yankees lefthander Andy Pettitte has been confirmed as the special speaker for the Nov. 19 event at the Colonnade in Ringgold. Pettitte has a 255151 regular-season record for his 18 years in the big leagues and is 19-11 in the playoffs. He’s been part of five world championships.
Pettitte also has been involved for years with SCORE, the Chattanoogabased ministry best known for taking high school and college sports teams to the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and other countries throughout the world.
“Andy’s been on several mission trips with SCORE, and he works with our outreach in the Dominican Republic,” organization founder Ron Bishop said. “He’s taken his sons on two of our mission trips.
“Andy also has been one of our good donors. He’s a really good friend.”
John Zeller, like Bishop a former Tennessee Temple University coach and a longtime Yankees fan, is SCORE’s executive director. He lives in Tampa, Fla., and leads Yankees chapel services during spring training. Also during the spring, Pettitte regularly participates in SCORE’s fundraising golf tournament.
A native of Baton Rouge, La., Pettitte was a 22nd-round draft choice by the Yankees out of Deer Park (Texas) High School in 1990 and signed with them the next spring after an 8-2 season with San Jacinto North junior college in Houston. He made his big-league debut on April 29, 1995, and never has had a losing season. The closest he came to that was 14-14 in 2008.
He went 21-8 in 1996 and again in 2003 with the Yankees, and he was 19-9 in 2000. In 2005 he was 17-9 with a career-best 2.39 earned run average with the Houston Astros. Now 41, he was in retirement in 2011 but came back with the Yankees and was 5-4 with a 2.87 ERA in 12 starts last year, and he’s 10-9 with a 4.03 ERA this season.
Even his moment of infamy had a positive element relative to some of his contemporaries. Pettitte admitted in 2007 that he had used human growth hormone briefly in 2002 to accelerate his recovery from an elbow injury, and he weathered the negative response with seemingly little long-term damage to his reputation.
The “Night With the Stars” banquet will begin at 7 p.m. on that Tuesday in mid-November, and those buying VIP passes can “meet and greet” Pettitte beginning at 6. A title sponsor gets four reserved seats at Pettitte’s table, four VIP passes and exclusive autographed items for $5,000, and a VIP table of eight with “special” autographed items costs $2,000. Other tables of eight cost $800, or $1,000 with two VIP passes thrown in, and individual tickets cost $100 or $400 with a VIP pass.
Anyone interested in making a reservation can contact Mickey Bane at mickey@ scoreintl.org or 894-7111.