This was a particularly gratifying story to write. As I mentioned in my last post, I love working with CC Sabathia — he’s an interesting guy, really open about his process, really intelligent on and off the mound. I was working with his family’s foundation on the marathon story when the news broke that he was entering rehab. I immediately wondered if the relationship I had built with his team of advisers would make me the right person to help tell his story.
I reached out to CC’s people, and they were happy to work together. I flew down to Tampa and met CC at his house, where we went to a back room and talked for about 40 minutes. In preparation, I had spoken with a bunch of people, including some in the field of mental health — nothing on the record yet, I just wanted to know the best ways to handle the conversation. I obviously had a job to do, and I wanted to get the most out of my time with CC, but I wanted to know the questions I should ask, the topics I should avoid, and other strategies to get someone to talk about something this personal.
I was happy with how everything came out. CC was really open to talking, and he did a good job of sticking to areas where he was comfortable, doing his best to move me away from some places he didn’t want to go. But he didn’t refuse to answer a single question, and he didn’t seem resentful (or angry) when I pushed him.
In planning for the story, I had initially wavered between writing in the third person, or having it be first person in CC’s voice. But in the end, I decided to do it first person in my own voice. I thought the story was most interestingly told through my eyes, not as a reporter, but as a person in the room with him. I thought that, counterintuitively, having my own voice in there describing the situation would actually make it LESS judgmental than approaching the issue as an omniscient narrator. And I also thought it humanized the entirety of the situation.
