Tag: CC Sabathia

Going, Going, Gone

(This story originally appeared in the October 2019 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

I’ve definitely written more words about CC Sabathia than any other person or subject in my career. I’m not sure exactly how it started, I just felt a quick rapport with him as I started my Yankees career, and I was able to mine about five very personal, very in-depth stories out of him.

In that time, I’ve been to two of CC’s houses, I’ve shared meals with him on the road, I’ve hung out around his kids. I ran a marathon on his PitCCh In Foundation’s running team. I packed backpacks that he and Amber would give to young school kids.

CC is a special guy, a huge heart, an amazing talent, a real hero to so many baseball fans. When he struggled, he wore it for everyone to see. When he thrived, fans felt every bit of his joy and intensity. He was so dominant for so long, then relied on smarts to finish his journey. In the end, with more than 3,000 strikeouts and more than 250 wins, he seems a sure get a spot in Cooperstown. He earned it.

Last year, I wrote a long feature about his career, figuring it might be the end of the road. When he came back for one more year, I decided that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to look at the role that baseball played in who he was, and what life would be like for him — and for the Yankees — when it was over. So I followed him a bit around the city and around the country, all the while trying to find out what sense of nostalgia he was feeling. The answer, usually, was none. He would laugh, but would say that he just wasn’t feeling it yet. He told amazing stories about his time in the game, about his dreams, but he said that he was also looking forward to it being done.

I told him he had to make me a promise. The minute he started feeling nostalgic, he had to promise to let us know. He laughed.

In the end, the injuries won out, and it looked like CC’s career was going to end even before his last postseason. When he was able to get that spot on the ALCS roster, I was thrilled to see him get one more shot on the mound. When he came in for Game 4, and we all figured it was possibly his last time on the Yankee Stadium mound, we all watched extra close. When his shoulder gave out, and he had to walk off the field in pain, next to trainer Stevie Donohue … it was one of the hardest things I’ve watched on a baseball field.

The next day, arm in a sling, CC was laughing. He knew it was over, but he loved the ride, loved leaving it all out on the field. He told stories about the fact that shit never could start until he was ready. It was awesome, albeit too late to get into the story.

That said, I’m thrilled with this one. I love the way it tells Amber’s story alongside his. I love the quotes from Mark Teixeira about the things he misses, about success, and the desire to hit home runs again. I love when Amber says that they grew up in the game, but now they’ve grown out of it.

I’m going to miss covering CC Sabathia, but I’m so lucky to have gotten to write about him so much over the years. I hope I did it well.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/cc-sabathia-finishes-final-season?t=yankees-magazine

The Take and the Give

(This story appears in the October edition of Yankees Magazine.)

I’ve written about CC Sabathia plenty over the years. He’s one of the best guys on the team to talk with — always funny, always available. He doesn’t BS you at all; one example that has always stuck with me is after the Yankees traded away a lot of veterans in 2016 during a hyper-speed rebuild. That week, I asked CC what he thought about the young kids getting their chances. The big left-hander basically told me he couldn’t care less about them. He was a veteran, and he didn’t have enough time left to think about the future.

It was a funny comment, but I question whether he meant it. After all, Sabathia has been leading the Yankees’ clubhouse for years, deftly taking the baton from Derek Jeter (much as he took The Captain’s locker when Jeter retired). CC is a big brother and mentor to so many of the young kids on this roster — everyone loves him, and he loves all of them.

My goal for this feature was to write about CC’s first decade in pinstripes. He signed a one-year contract before the 2018 season, so whenever the Yankees get eliminated, he’ll become a free agent. He has given no indication that he wants to retire, and I certainly think that he was good enough this year for the Yankees to offer him the same deal again. But if this is it for CC, it was a pretty incredible ride.

I reached out to his people about an in-depth interview away from the stadium, and offered to go on the road if it was easier (most players have more down time when they’re traveling — away from family and other commitments). I was shocked, though, when they offered me time during a trip to Oakland. Sabathia’s from the Bay Area, and he’s always terribly busy when he heads home. But he was doing an event for his PitCCh In Foundation on the off day after the series, so I’m guessing it was how they were hoping to bribe me into covering it. Mission accomplished.

I spoke to CC over breakfast for about an hour, and it was a great, enlightening talk. But I couldn’t write the story I had planned — it didn’t make sense to fly to Oakland/San Francisco to write about New York. I ended up speaking to a ton of people from his past, and I got a picture of an incredibly strong person who’s incredibly important to his community. Everyone made time to talk to me about him — I can’t count how many of my interviews included some variation of “I barely have any time, but I’ll always talk about CC.” From a young age, everyone back home in Vallejo, California, seemed to know that Sabathia was special, and they all went out of their way to make sure he could thrive. His mother, his coach and his friends all told me stories about people basically getting him out of a place where something bad was about to happen, walking him home instead of to a party where things would go down. He was lifted out of Vallejo, and he seems to have made it his life’s work to help out other kids in similar situations. 

Whatever comes next for CC, he’ll always be one of my favorite guys to write about. I hope this isn’t the end for him, but if it is, I hope he gets to live out his dream of never having to wear a collared shirt again.

Hope you’ll read and enjoy.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/looking-back-on-cc-sabathias-career/c-296957024?tid=163658034

See The New CC

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.

 

NYY_April16_pg122 NYY_April16_pg123 NYY_April16_pg124 NYY_April16_pg126 NYY_April16_pg128 NYY_April16_pg130 NYY_April16_pg132

Payoff Pitch

Pretty sure nothing will ever compete with this story for the title of hardest I’ve ever worked on a piece. In 2015, I joined CC Sabathia’s PitCCh In Foundation NYC Marathon team, fundraising for the charity and running the 26.2 miles with CC’s image on my shirt.

I can certainly say that I’ve never inserted myself so much into my story. I’ve written plenty in the first person, but never have I gone to lengths like I did in reporting on how the charity works, how it builds its team, where the money goes, and what it means to the runners, the family members, and to the people the foundation helps.

I hated running this year, and I can safely say that my second marathon will be my last. But this is probably the most fulfilling reporting assignment of my life. It was really incredible to work so closely with CC’s family on this project, and to get to see it from so many sides.

Also, I really loved the work I got to do with Tiki Barber in my reporting. He was totally open about his whole experience, and in the three conversations that we had, I really was able to find so many things that we share in common, despite his being a Pro Bowl running back, and me being … decidedly not. When I interviewed Meb Keflezighi, he told me that despite his place at the front of the pack, and mine damn near close to the back, “It takes the same effort, just some are faster. But the duration, the pain, the agony that goes through it, it is the same.” I really took that message to heart.