YANKS NEED SOME HELP
CC saying goodbye to city where it all started
TORONTO — CC Sabathia was just a kid when he first made it to Cleveland. A 20-year-old power pitching lefty who had fewer pounds to carry around and a lot less experience, he made his mark there quickly. Even when he left, when Cleveland traded him away as a 28-year-old star, that young CC Sabathia still had so much to learn, so much to experience in baseball and life.
He basically had a whole career ahead of him.
Now, over a decade later, Sabathia is heading back to where it started for him professionally and maybe the magnitude of this season is starting to hit him a little. After declaring this would be his final major league season last November, Sabathia said this spring he wouldn’t spend the season constantly taking a tour down memory lane.
This stop won’t be an over-emotional moment for him.
“But maybe I’ll think about it all a little, Cleveland and Oakland, the last time I will pitch there,” Sabathia said. “I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of emotion, because I don’t really have a lot of memories of Cleveland.
“I am just glad I get a chance to pitch there again, one more time,” Sabathia said. “It will be nice.”
Obviously, Sabathia’s home is in the Bay Area. That final regular-season trip to Oakland in mid-August will be the time when he may let himself feel the emotions of his nearly two-decade major league career coming to an end. That is where it all really started for him.
But Cleveland played a pretty significant part in his potentially Hall of Fame career.
Twenty-one years ago this month, Cleveland picked Sabathia in the first round of the 1998 MLB amateur draft. He was just an 18-year-old kid out of Vallejo High School in California. A decade later, by the time it was clear they weren’t going to be able to sign him to an extension before free agency and had to trade him to the Brewers, Sabathia was already a star and eager to chase a title via free agency elsewhere. In eight years in Cleveland, Sabathia
racked up 106 wins, 1,265 of his 3,028 strikeouts and claimed his only Cy Young award.
So there will be some history there when Sabathia takes the mound at Progressive Field, which was Jacobs Field back when he made his major league debut April 8, 2001 — a 4-3 win over the Orioles — on Saturday. There may even be some history made in his final start there, with him looking to earn his 250th career win. It would be a neat way to wrap up his experience with that organization.
But, no matter where he started, Sabathia will certainly be remembered — and if elected to the Hall of Fame as some expect immortalized — as a Yankee.
“This is where I have spent most of my career,” Sabathia said Thursday. “It’s where I won a World Series, it’s where I’ve come back to. I think of myself as a Yankee, definitely.”
After a short stint in Milwaukee as a hired arm to try to help the Brewers in a playoff run, Sabathia came to the Bronx to truly make his mark on the game. After five playoff starts but falling short of the title with Cleveland and the Brewers, it was as a Yankee that Sabathia finally got to a World Series, making two starts — and won it.
So far, he has 132 wins and 1,635 strikeouts in a Yankees uniform.
It was with the Yankees where he has also gone through those baseball highs and plenty of life’s lows.
He was treated for alcoholism in 2015. Sabathia had to redefine himself as a pitcher in the Bronx, as time and age turned him from a hard-throwing youngster into an aging, crafty lefty who is fighting his own body — specifically a right knee that has no cartilage remaining — for one last chance to win a World Series.
Sabathia has pitched in Cleveland plenty over the last 11 years, but Saturday will probably be the last time. While he’s not interested in a farewell tour or expecting any emotional farewells, he’s looking forward to it.
“I am just glad I’ll get another chance to pitch there,” Sabathia said. “I am looking forward to it.”