Three mini-columns for the price of one:

•ANDY PETTITTE

Yes, he is one of the new poster boys for substance abuse in baseball, but Pettitte should be given kudos for admitting over the weekend that he took HGH for two days in 2002.

It couldn’t have been easy.

It couldn’t have been easy to see yourself in the Mitchell Report, to be in the center of what’s arguably been the biggest scandal in baseball history, your reputation tarnished, your name sullied. It can’t be easy to see yourself in the middle of the firestorm.

And no one would have been surprised if he had denied it, because that’s human nature. Especially in something like this, which happed a while ago, and in which there are no records, no real smoking gun. The Mitchell Report is not a court of law, and George Mitchell had no subpoena power, and it is very easy to deny, deny, deny and hope it all goes away.

Pettitte admitted it.

He also put it in a certain context, saying he did it to try to recover faster from an elbow injury, to try to come back to help his team, not to gain a competitive advantage. This may be splitting hairs, but at least it’s an explanation, makes Pettitte more human, not so much some millionaire athlete who acts like he’s immune from life’s realities, but a man who made a bad decision.

This is what baseball needs now.

It needs everyone involved to admit their trespasses, not hide behind lawyers and denials, not treat the rest of us as fools. It needs everyone to tell their story, explain what happened. For we are a forgiving society, one that can’t wait to give people a second chance, especially celebrities. We will forgive, there’s little question of that.

But first we need the truth. Need the other involved players to say I made a mistake, and I am sorry.

Need others to do what Pettitte has done.

•JIM CALHOUN

We tend to see coaches in a certain way, almost as if they’re cartoon characters.

See the coach yell and scream.

See the coach throw a nutty.

Or, as Calhoun said, “People tell me I’m crazy. I understand that. So let’s get beyond that.”

He did recently, appearing at the Mystic Aquarium to speak about autism, a developmental disability that strikes young children, which he called “an epidemic in this country.”

The stats confirm this: One out of every 150 children are now born with autism, a huge increase over what it once was. It also strikes boys four times as much as girls, and the divorce rate of parents with autistic children is 80 percent.

Calhoun has two grandchildren with autism, has seen it impact his family’s life.

“Whatever hand you’re dealt, you have to deal with,” he said. “But something is going on with our children.”

He now tries to increase awareness of the disease by wearing a blue pin during games to draw attention to it, and by spreading the word whenever he can.

“I’m fortunate to be a voice for those who cannot speak,” he said.

Another side to Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun.

The one we rarely see.

•PATRIOTS

We are all spoiled, of course.

We want the Patriots to not only win, of course, but to win big, with trumpets blaring. Want them to win as if they are the reincarnation of Lombardi’s Packers, with the ’72 Dolphins thrown in. We want to not only see greatness every week, but the validation of that greatness. And we want to see it week after bloody week, all the way to the presentation of the Super Bowl trophy.

That’s been the problem the last few weeks, with the exception of the Steelers game. They simply haven’t won big enough. The Eagles. The Ravens. And the Jets on Sunday. All were not what we’ve come to expect from this team that’s marching toward history.

We are all spoiled.

Sunday was an obvious example of a game that didn’t come close to living up to the hype that surrounded it. How could it? We didn’t want a game. We wanted the resolution of a blood feud. We wanted to see payback for Spygate, wanted to see the Pats humiliate the Jets, then Belichick to humiliate Mangini. We didn’t want to see them win, 20-10, in a game that was actually close in the fourth quarter. We wanted glorious retribution.

Instead, we got the football equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping.

Or at least it seemed that way.

We are all spoiled.

That’s what happens when there are too many games that are too easy, too many games that were not games as much as showcases for how good the Pats are, too many games that seemed little more than steppingstones to a coronation. That’s what happens when the bar gets raised so high that anything less than total domination seems like a letdown.

And it no longer matters that the Pats do everything to defuse all of the greatness talk, do everything they can to talk about the upcoming opponent as if they were the descendents of football gods. We don’t want to hear that. We don’t want to hear that this is the NFL and no one’s gone undefeated in 35 years. We don’t want to hear that this is the NFL and you take any win you can get and savor it, no matter who the opponent is.

We want to see greatness every week, total domination.

We are all spoiled.

breynolds@projo.com