Sabathia is sharpening his voice on
When Brian Cashman recruited CC Sabathia to become the next Yankees ace, the GM hold him that he wanted him “not just because of who you are as a player, but someone who brings people together.”
Sabathia’s reputation as a unifying leader has never been up for debate. If he’s inducted into the Hall of Fame, the consensus around his character will carry his sturdy statistical resume to Cooperstown.
Yet, one year into retirement, Sabathia suggested that pursuing unity in the locker room above all else was, in some instances, his shortcoming. Evading larger issues, especially those attached to warring political views, could have repercussions he’s still grappling with.
“Maybe that’s where I failed as a teammate. I always just wanted to keep it baseball,” Sabathia told the Daily News on Wednesday. You know, stick to sports. It makes sense that Sabathia would lead that way. “Culture was an issue in that clubhouse,” Cashman said of the pre-Sabathia Yankees. “We were broken, and it needed to be addressed.” But there are bigger things than keeping the peace in the clubhouse. “I see the importance of having those conversations now, in 2020. Maybe I should have pushed that more as a player,” Sabathia said with a twinge of regret.
Sabathia recounts his rare failure of leadership during a moment that, regrettably, encapsulates everything that went wrong in 2020. The Yankee great was distributing cloth masks and health sanitizer in the Bronx with his wife, Amber, instead of dodging the pandemic at home. Why? Because nine months into a global health crisis that had already killed over 200,000 Americans, there were still thousands of locals lined up through Fordham’s Poe Park collecting vital supplies they could not otherwise afford.
Boxes of food were also donated at the event co-organized by Sabathia’s PitCCh In Foundation and Pull Up Neighbor, a non-profit organization that provides direct aid to vulnerable communities. The Bronx was vulnerable to the pandemic: The poverty and inequality afflicting the neighborhood are much less novel than the coronavirus that ravaged the borough.
Sabathia’s charitable event, however, didn’t stick to sports or even charity, pushing voter education. He used resources provided by Black Men Vote (a nonprofit aiming to, in their own words “elect politicians who pass laws that benefit and protect Black people”) to help registered voters create a voting plan as they collected their PPE, food, backpacks for school and toys for children ahead of Christmas.
This time, there was an edge, more consistent with his brash confidence on the mound than his relative timidity around third rails in the clubhouse.
Sabathia had at times, made some aspects of his politics plain. He once proclaimed “I just don’t believe in anything that is Trump” as he promised to decline the president’s invitation to the White House if Yankees won the World Series. But he admitted to shying away from divisive subjects, particularly in locker room settings, especially as they charted across racial lines.
“I think you just have such different opinions in baseball from, you know, the guys from the Black guys to, you know, the white guys. It’s a huge contrast. So, I think voting never really comes up in the clubhouse or, you know in a locker room or things like that.” Meanwhile, in the NFL and NBA, where the amount of Black players hovers around 70%, Sabathia said “a lot of people look the same in those leagues.”
“So, it’s easy to talk about those things.”
Yet, without stumping for a
candidate, the Sabathias and their partners made their political priorities clear,
Everyone with PitCCh In wore masks with a simple four-letter message, V-O-T-E. Wearing a sweatshirt that read POWERFUL BLACK VOTER in all caps, as Amber did while passing out supplies, carried symbolic defiance against a current president that celebrates, privately, that Black non-voters helped swing the 2016 election in his favor. Pull Up Neighbor founder Anthony Holt, who co-organized the graband-go with PitCCh In and the Sabathias said that they wanted to “make sure that everyone knows your vote counts. (They) wouldn’t be trying to get (it) suppressed if it didn’t count.”
What changed? Credit the Sabathia kids for helping augmenting their parents’ voice by finding their own, joining in the anti-police violence protests across the world, and imploring mom and dad to do the same. Amber said she had made plans to bring her daughter, Cyia, to the Trump International in
Columbus Circle on Saturday for the Women’s March.
“I don’t think we consciously sat down and decided to do anything. I think it was our kids, wanting to go out and march in the wake of the death of George Floyd. And, it kind of turned into us thinking about helping people vote, getting PPE to people because we’re in the middle of a pandemic. So I really give the kids the credit for what we’ve been doing the last couple of months,” said Sabathia. It’s an energy he’s carried, not just with his foundation’s work throughout the pandemic, but his vocal partnership with current Black players through The Player’s Alliance.
Amber may not have stepped foot in her husband’s locker rooms, but she believes every athlete and public figure should become bolder in any space they’re in.
“It’s our duty, if you have any type of a platform whatsoever, to make change,” said Amber. “Even talking to your friends. Even in intimate settings. Being more vocal about standing up for your rights.”