Yesterday, the New York Yankees announced they were going to retire Andy Pettitte’s number 46.

You may recall Andy Pettitte. He was the pitcher who admitted to using HGH with Roger Clemens. But he used it only one time. Honest. Just that once.

For his honorable admission, Pettitte was canonized as another Yankee hero.

In doing so, he also threw his teammate and friend, Roger Clemens, under the bus. A bus that Clemens was all too familiar being under.  Pettitte’s testimony corroborated that of Clemens’s trainer Brian McNamee, who also testified to Clemens’s rampant use of PEDs.

Then, something unusual happened. As Clemens’s trial became real and as Andy Pettitte was going to be called as a witness against him, suddenly Andy Pettitte’s memory became foggy. Suddenly he “misremembered” his testimony, and well it seems like shucks maybe he was sort of not remembering correctly and well gee shucks maybe he can’t remember what happened with Roger Clemens.

And, just like that, a credible nail in the heart of Roger Clemens’s trial went away. Almost as if Clemens told Pettitte, ” You know, if you throw me under the bus, the truth about your HGH use will also come out.”

Having your wings tarnished tends to do that to angels.

Pettitte’s memory suddenly abandoned him. Along with his dignity. And, it seems, his respect among his former teammates. Or at least one of them with a bit of integrity.

When it was announced yesterday that the Yankees were retiring Andy Pettitte’s tainted number, his former teammate Chuck Knoblauch could no longer take it. He played clean while he, and countless other Yankees, watched guys like A-Rod and Pettitte and Clemens cheat the system for millions and millions of ill-gotten wealth.

Knoblauch tweeted his displeasure with his former team and his former teammate:

Of course, Knoblauch has a boatload of problems of his own.