CLEVELAND -- CC Sabathia and his wife, Amber, sat down for breakfast on Friday morning and reminisced on the special memories that they shared here nearly two decades ago.
This is where their first three children were born. This is where they got married and moved into their first home together. And with Sabathia set to be cemented in Cleveland history by being inducted in the Guardians’ Hall of Fame on Saturday evening, it was only fitting to try to remember everything that happened in his eight seasons with the ballclub.
“How old were you when you got called up?” Amber asked him.
He responded: “20.”
It was a strange realization. He was just 20 years old when he became a Major League Baseball player -- the same age as his oldest son, who is set to begin his junior year in college. It’s only now that someone can look back on that time in their life and realize how crazy that concept truly is.
“I wasn't ready to be called up to the big leagues,” Sabathia said with a smile, “but if you asked me back then, I should have been called up the year before.”
Sabathia remembers that after each outing -- no matter how he performed -- he’d be convinced that he was going back to the Minor Leagues. It was a season full of paranoia that somehow led to a 17-5 record with a 4.39 ERA that earned him a second place finish in the AL Rookie of the Year vote behind Ichiro Suzuki. Sabathia wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he was about to become one of the fiercest workhorses in the game.
This was a homegrown player. Cleveland selected Sabathia in the first round of the 1998 Draft when he was just 17 years old. And in parts of eight seasons with the club, Sabathia pitched to a 3.83 ERA with 1,265 strikeouts, which ranks seventh in franchise history. He was one of three pitchers in team history to be selected to three or more All-Star Games. And let’s not forget the AL Cy Young Award he secured in 2007 for his 19-7 record in 34 starts with an MLB best 241 innings and a 3.21 ERA.
As he reflected on his time in Cleveland, Sabathia determined that the 2007 season had to be his fondest memory.
“Just watching the way we played, me winning the Cy Young, us winning the division. I really think we were the best team in baseball.”
There was no question that Saturday’s pregame ceremonies to make Sabathia the 48th member of the Cleveland Hall of Fame would mean so much to the hurler who was hoping to be the ace of this team for all of his career. Even though it didn’t end up that way, as he was traded in the middle of the 2008 season to Milwaukee and ended his career with 11 seasons with the Yankees, he knew he would’ve never gotten to the point that he did without beginning in Cleveland.
Without this franchise, he knows he wouldn’t be thinking about a possibility of being a first-round inductee to the National Baseball Hall of Fame when he joins the ballot this winter.
“It's cool to be able to have my name considered amongst Hall of Famers and hopefully one day to be able to get in,” Sabathia said. “It's something I think about all the time and it'd be special to be able to get in. If that happens.”
But on Saturday, the Guardians Hall of Fame was the only thing to focus on. He paced back and forth in the bullpen in right field until his name was announced. He emerged onto the warning track and the fans at Progressive Field erupted in cheers.
It was one final moment for reflection as he embraced a crowd that so warmly embraced him when he was a kid from California trying to grow up on the Major League stage. But every time he thought of this fan base, he constantly fixated on times that could’ve been better or how he could’ve done more to make them happy. And as this weekend of reflection came to an end, he had one final message to relay to the fans.
“Just thank you. This fanbase is incredible,” Sabathia said. “I would have to say sorry, too. I feel like if I pitched better in 2007, we win the World Series and we’re still not looking [to end] that drought. … But thank you.”