Eighteen years ago, the New York Yankees were a broken team. The clubhouse was divided into factions, ace Mike Mussina had just retired, a young generation of arms had floundered, and for the first time in more than a decade, the team spent October on the couch. It was, for fans who had grown up during the dynasty years, the franchise’s lowest point that they could remember.
Enter Carsten Charles “CC” Sabathia. Despite knowing the southpaw’s preference for the West Coast, the Bronx Bombers put on a full-court press to bring him aboard, ultimately inking him to a seven-year, $161-million contract. The rest, as they say, is history.
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Carsten Charles “CC” Sabathia
Born: July 21, 1980 (Vallejo, CA)
Yankees Tenure: 2009-2019
Like many Hall of Famers, CC Sabathia was a dominant multi-sport athlete in his youth, helping lead his high school basketball team to a deep run for the California state championship, soliciting offers as a pass rusher and tight end from UCLA and the University of Hawaii, and earning second team all-American honors for his performance on the mound and at the plate. During his senior year, he signed a letter of intent to play baseball and football for Hawaii, but never made it to campus.
Selected with the 20th overall pick of the 1998 draft, Sabathia entered the Cleveland organization at just 17 years old, making him one of the youngest players in professional baseball. He never let that hold him back, however: he stormed through three levels of the minors in his age-18 season, and despite never tossing a single inning above Double-A, cracked the Opening Day roster in 2001. CC rewarded the Cleveland’s faith in him by finishing seventh in the AL in strikeouts (171), fourth in K/9 (8.53), and first in H/9 (7.44). More importantly, he established himself a reputation for coming up big in big spots, with manager Charlie Manuel saying at the time, “It seems like every time we need a big win, C.C. [sic] is standing on the mound and he gives it to us” — a reputation reinforced by his Game 3 victory in the ALDS. Unfortunately for him, he only finished second in the AL Rookie of the Year vote, behind future Yankees teammate Ichiro Suzuki, something Sabathia still jokes about today.
Sabathia spent the next five and a half seasons in Cleveland, winning the 2007 AL Cy Young Award and establishing himself as one of the game’s premier pitchers. Unfortunately for him, he was one of the team’s few bright spots in the period, and after failing to put together a winning team around him yet again, Cleveland ultimately traded him to the Milwaukee Brewers at the 2008 deadline for Matt LaPorta, Zach Jackson and Rob Bryson, and a player-to-be-named-later that would eventually become Michael Brantley.
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While CC would only spend half a season in Milwaukee, he had such an impact that he earned a place in the Brewers’ Wall of Honor. In 17 starts — including three straight on short rest in September — he gave them 130.2 innings (more than seven innings per start), allowing just 24 runs. His seven complete games and three shutouts led the National League (and since his two Cleveland shutouts led the AL, he became the first pitcher in history to accomplish the feat) and earned him down-ballot votes for Cy Young. He was a major reason that the organization notched its first postseason berth since 1982, and even though he walked that winter, his time in Milwaukee has never been forgotten.
That winter, Brian Cashman and the Yankees pushed hard to bring Sabathia to the Bronx, leaving the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas to visit the lefty at his home in California. That show of commitment, plus a record-breaking contract, convinced Sabathia to abandon the West Coast and take his talents to 161st Street in the Bronx.
After a slow start to the 2009 season, Sabathia settled down to become the ace he was brought in to be. Most importantly, he put together one of the most dominant stretches of his career that October. The lead man of the Yankees’ three-man rotation (alongside A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte), Sabathia allowed just two runs in 6.2 innings in Game 1 of the ALDS, went eight innings in Games 1 and 4 of the ALCS to earn MVP honors, and shut down the Phillies lineup in Games 1 and 4 (even if Cliff Lee outdueled him in the first) as the Yankees won their 27th championship in franchise history.
While that ring did not spark another dynasty, that was no fault of Sabathia’s. Over the next few years, he was one of the most dependable arms in the sport, to such an extent that the Yankees negotiated a two-year extension with him in order to void his opt-out after the 2011 season — an extension announced, rather humorously, by Sabathia himself on Twitter.
Unfortunately, after the Yankees were crushed by the Detroit Tigers in the 2012 ALCS, the window of contention slammed shut. While Sabathia wasn’t the main reason the 2013 and 2014 teams were not good — that blame predominantly belongs to the collection of has-beens and never-weres filling out the lineup — he certainly did not help. After crash dieting in the winter of 2012-2013 after a cousin died from heart disease, Sabathia saw his fastball velocity drop to 91 mph, and in 2014, he underwent season-ending knee surgery to repair damage that was so bad it required multiple follow up surgeries.
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When Sabathia returned to the mound the following year, it looked like more of the same, as he allowed opposing hitters to slash .297/.342/.484 in his first 24 starts. One knee brace later, though, and he suddenly became the CC of old: across his final five starts of the year, his ERA dropped to 2.17, and hitters slashed just .224/.320/.327. So long as the Yankees made it past the Astros in the Wild Card (alas, they did not), the combination of a hot Sabathia, a young Luis Severino, and an ace in Masahiro Tanaka gave the team the best postseason rotation they had in years.
Unfortunately, Sabathia had a more important battle to fight. On October 5, 2015, CC Sabathia issued the following statement through the Yankees:
I am looking forward to being out on the field with my team next season playing the game that brings me so much happiness.
“Today I am checking myself into an alcohol rehabilitation center to receive the professional care and assistance needed to treat my disease.
I love baseball and I love my teammates like brothers, and I am also fully aware that I am leaving at a time when we should all be coming together for one last push toward the World Series. It hurts me deeply to do this now, but I owe it to myself and to my family to get myself right. I want to take control of my disease, and I want to be a better man, father and player.
I want to thank the New York Yankees organization for their encouragement and understanding. Their support gives me great strength and has allowed me to move forward with this decision with a clear mind.
As difficult as this decision is to share publicly, I don’t want to run and hide. But for now please respect family’s need for privacy as we work through this challenge together.
Being an adult means being accountable. Being a baseball player means that others look up to you. I want my kids — and others who may have become fans of mine over the years — to know that I am not too big of a man to ask for help. I want to hold my head up high, have a full heart and be the type of person again that I can be proud of. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Since this day, Sabathia has spoken time and time again about his battle with alcoholism, emphasizing that admitting to himself that he had a drinking problem and needed help was a scarier proposition than pitching in the World Series, undergoing surgery, or anything else he had done in his life. He had battled with alcohol addiction for years, initially recognizing that it was a problem in 2012, but not truly understanding the need for help to get sober until he spent the weekend in Baltimore binge drinking in his hotel during the final series of the 2015 season.
Fresh out of rehab, Sabathia reinvented himself as a command pitcher who sought to generate soft contact rather than overpower pitchers with velocity. From 2016 to 2019, he was a reliable “five and fly” guy, who served as both a mentor to the young pitchers on the Yankees staff and as an enforcer (just ask the Tampa Bay Rays!). During that time, he was honored by Cleveland with a special invitation to the 2019 All-Star Game — the inspiration, I believe, for the commissioner’s Special Selections — and etched himself into baseball history by becoming the third southpaw to record 3000 strikeouts.
Every professional athlete talks about wanting to leave it all out on the field. For Sabathia, that was quite literally the case. Working out of the bullpen in Game 4 of the ALCS, Sabathia suffered a subluxation of the left shoulder. Unable to continue pitching and with tears in his eyes, CC walked off the mound one final time. As Aaron Judge would say after the game, “He got everything out of that arm.” At long last, his body — balking for years — had finally given out on him.
Since his retirement, Sabathia has not left the baseball world. He continued the podcast R2C2 with the YES Network’s Ryan Ruocco through 2023, joined the Commissioner’s Office in 2022, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame last July. Later this year, the Yankees faithful will get to see him immortalized in Monument Park, as his No. 52 will be officially retired. And as of last week, he is once again part of the Milwaukee Brewers family, as his son was selected by them in this year’s MLB Draft.
See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.
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