Keidel: Why We Should Be Cheering For CC Sabathia In 2016
By Jason Keidel
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While the Yankees decided to close the curtain on Opening Day (it only feels like January), another club decision makes the Bronx Bombers must-watch television.
CC Sabathia was given the fifth and final spot in the starting rotation. And unlike most polarizing, personnel decisions, this one should have us all nodding in approval.
While it may have been a coin toss to tag Sabathia over Ivan Nova, perhaps his somber -- and then sober -- autumn will give him strength this spring.
A sick side of us loves to watch people stumble. Especially celebrities. Nothing gives us greater pleasure than seeing stars plunge back to earth. The very people we applaud on their way to privilege become symbols of excess, emblems of the new, opulent world order.
So it was no surprise that Sabathia's descent into darkness became click bait, online chum for online gangsters who view the world through the warped prism of their own failures.
Folks who never suffered from substance abuse -- though likely from other forms of addiction -- were quick to slam the mallet in judgment when Sabathia was felled by his demons. None of them, of course, has spent five minutes in the celebrity fishbowl that Sabathia has called home for a decade.
Last season was a series of conflicting messages from Sabathia. While he finished 2015 with a 6-10 record and 4.73 ERA, he had flashes of his old form over his final four starts, posting a 2-1 mark with a 2.17 ERA.
Then came that lost, last weekend in Baltimore. No need to parse the particulars. He drank a lot, perhaps more than normal, surely more than he could handle. Soon after, he checked into rehab.
Then came the specious indignation from sports fans, who branded Sabathia soft, simple and a quitter. The man whom Joe Girardi said got the Yanks their last World Series, who has won a Cy Young, who took the ball for 11 Opening Days, was suddenly a loser. Just consider the source.
Sabathia has always handled himself with decency and dignity. The gentle giant of the Yankees since 2009 is still a hulking figure, just sans his fastball. But former fireballers have found salvation in their golden years. Not long ago, Pedro Martinez changed his pitching persona to great effect in Gotham.
For some reason, we assume that stars grow some secret membrane that shields them from the rigors and temptations of normal life. But more than a few cherished Yankees have fallen to the bottle, from Mickey Mantle to Billy Martin. Indeed, as much as we blindly adore the laundry, we also revel in debating both sides of human impulse, from the Captain America affectations of Derek Jeter to the web of PEDs that snared A-Rod. Sabathia, like most of us, is somewhere in between.
Maybe Sabathia doesn't short-circuit the radar gun anymore. Maybe, at 35, he's deep into the back nine of his career. Maybe his spot in the rotation is more ornamental than essential. Maybe he won't put up numbers commensurate to the $25 million he's making this year.
But it's only in the warped world of sports do we assign a value to a human based on his salary. Indeed, if Sabathia stays sober, then he will win a game larger than any he worked from a mound.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel