The Yankees were “broken,” in Brian Cashman’s words. That’s why the veteran general manager made a clandestine escape from the 2008 Winter Meetings in Las Vegas.
Instead of hobnobbing with agents and executives on the Bellagio floor, he was in CC Sabathia's sunken Vallejo, Calif., living room, about to make the biggest gamble of the offseason. Cashman delivered what he called his “John Calipari” recruiting pitch, selling the Yankees.
Sabathia expressed hesitancy. The league was buzzing about friction in the clubhouse, and the left-hander hoped for a West Coast landing spot. Cashman laid his cards on the table: Yes, there were issues, but that’s why they needed someone like Sabathia to bring them together.
As for New York, Cashman knew the big man would love it -- and if he didn’t, he promised to let him out of his contract. Sabathia accepted, and everything they talked about that afternoon came to fruition: Sabathia is entering the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., with a Yankees cap etched on his plaque.
“When I was playing, I wasn't pitching to go to the Hall of Fame,” Sabathia said. “I was pitching to just win games. This is just icing on the cake. I’m honored and blessed to have people consider me to be a Hall of Famer, but that wasn't ever the goal. The goal was just to perform at the highest level as I could every single day.”
One of the fiercest workhorses of his generation, Sabathia was a six-time All-Star, American League Cy Young Award winner and World Series champion who now stands tall as a first-ballot Hall inductee.
Over a 19-year career with the Cleveland Indians (2001-08), Milwaukee Brewers (2008) and New York Yankees (2009-19), Sabathia established a reputation for consistency and dominance, highlighted by 251 victories and 3,093 strikeouts.
He hurled 3,577 1/3 innings across 561 Major League contests, surpassing the 200-inning threshold eight times. He’s one of just 15 pitchers in history to notch at least 250 wins and 3,000 strikeouts, and only the third left-hander to accomplish the feat, along with Hall of Famers Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson.
“Those numbers, I guess they mean that I'm a Hall of Famer, but I think the thing that means the most to me is just hearing my teammates talk about how much they loved playing behind me,” Sabathia said. “The numbers are the numbers. You go out and do whatever you can, and the results are the results, but it's about how you treat people.”
Drafted by Cleveland in the first round of the 1998 MLB Draft as a high schooler from Vallejo, Calif., Sabathia set the tone for his durability early, firing 180 1/3 innings as a 20-year-old rookie in 2001 (he finished second in the AL Rookie of the Year balloting to the Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki, now his teammate in the Hall of Fame Class of 2025).
Sabathia made his first two All-Star teams in 2003 and ’04. He was the AL’s Cy Young Award winner in ’07, when he posted a 19-7 record and a 3.21 ERA in 34 starts. That year, Sabathia paced the Majors with 241 innings, 975 batters faced and a 5.65 strikeout-to-walk ratio (209 to 37), breezily besting Josh Beckett of the Red Sox as the circuit’s top hurler.
By mid-2008, the Brewers needed pitching help to fuel a playoff push, and there was no better arm available than Sabathia, who became the centerpiece of a five-player July trade.
Sabathia said it was “devastating getting traded from Cleveland, because I thought I would be there forever.” His new team got what it hoped for -- and plenty more.
With Milwaukee, Sabathia registered a National League-leading seven complete games in 17 starts, posting a 1.65 ERA across 130 2/3 innings, including a complete game in the regular-season finale to clinch a playoff berth.
Sabathia took the ball on short rest in his final three starts over the objections of his representatives, who feared injury so close to a free-agency payday.
“Milwaukee left a huge impression on me,” Sabathia said. “Me and Prince [Fielder] are friends for life. Me and Billy Hall are friends for life. Me and David Riske were best friends before I got traded. The time I spent in Milwaukee was very special to me.”
Sabathia made it through that gauntlet healthy, and when the Brewers’ season ended in the NLDS, his services became available to all 30 teams. Sabathia initially believed that free agency might take him to the Dodgers. But the Yankees would not be denied, landing Sabathia with a record-setting seven-year, $161 million contract.
There was still veteran presence from the most recent World Series teams, but they weren’t meshing with newer additions. Sabathia’s assignment would be to lead the team on the field and unite the players in the clubhouse, a task he gamely took on by organizing team barbecues and group trips to NBA games.
“He was the connector in the clubhouse,” said Joe Girardi, who managed the Yankees from 2008-17. “He was special, and I loved him. He allowed you to manage games different. You could blow through your left-handed relievers the day before he pitched, because you weren’t going to have to use any of them -- who was going to be better than him?
“He was a tough guy on the field, but he was just a big teddy bear everywhere else. One year in Boston, the Celtics were in the playoffs and he got a suite. We were in Chicago on the Fourth of July and he got a boat to bring everybody out on the river. That’s just who he was. And you would always hear that laugh. It was infectious.”
Sabathia headlined a blockbuster offseason. The Yankees also added right-hander A.J. Burnett, first baseman Mark Teixeira and outfielder Nick Swisher in 2009 -- a campaign that ended with a ride on a parade float through the Canyon of Heroes. Sabathia delivered the franchise’s 27th World Series championship, pacing the Majors with 19 victories and earning recognition as the MVP of the club’s ALCS triumph over the Angels.
“Winning the World Series was so satisfying, because I just always felt like I was going to be a guy that would have numbers, but not a championship,” Sabathia said.
Those Yankees appeared set for a long run of October success. Alas, 2009 would represent Sabathia’s only World Series experience. He continued to excel from 2010-12, making three consecutive All-Star teams. He then experienced struggles and injury issues, including season-ending right knee surgery in July 2014.
Sabathia’s velocity diminished as he advanced into his mid-to-late 30s, prompting him to huddle with Andy Pettitte, who’d similarly needed late-career reinvention to lean on a cutter and prioritize control. The resurgent Sabathia pitched to a 14-5 record and a 3.69 ERA in 2017 for a Yankees club that finished one win shy of the World Series.
“The biggest separator for CC was his mentality. He was tenacious,” Pettitte said. “He had that bulldog approach to the point where he had a lack of care for his own well-being at times, and he wanted to take the ball every chance he could. He was a true warrior on the mound, and that type of make-up is very rare.”
Sabathia privately contemplated retirement after that ’17 season, but was nudged to continue pitching by an offseason phone call with MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds, who provided statistical data on how reaching 250 wins and 3,000 strikeouts would help his Hall case.
“I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today if Harold didn’t call me that offseason,” Sabathia said.
In an oft-cited example of Sabathia’s standing as a fiery competitor and loyal teammate, he was ejected from his final start of the 2018 season for hitting the Rays’ Jesús Sucre, responding after the Yanks’ Austin Romine was thrown behind earlier in the game.
That ejection came six outs shy of a $500,000 bonus. He did not shy away from his intent, saying, "For me, it was more just about taking care of my guys.” (The Yankees quietly paid the bonus anyway.)
Sabathia’s final appearance came in Game 4 of the 2019 ALCS against the Astros; having long expected that his troublesome right knee would force him from the mound, his left shoulder gave out instead, sending Sabathia to the dugout with tears in his eyes.
“It was the only way for it to end, because I would probably still be pitching, to be honest,” Sabathia said. “I’d still probably be searching for another championship, so it was the best way for my career to end, with me literally throwing my arm out. There was nothing else for me to do. It was the best way for me to walk away.”