The Hardest Pitch CC Sabathia Ever Had to Make Wasn’t on the Field

   by  Keith Allison 

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Former Cy Young award winner and struggling Yankee ace CC Sabathia announced on Monday that he will check himself into a Connecticut rehab facility for 30 days after a weekend-long drinking binge during a recent three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles in Baltimore. While the Yankees found themselves fighting for home-field advantage in the upcoming wild card playoff game against the Houston Astros, Sabathia was apparently more concentrated on getting drunk in his hotel room.

“He drank every day last week apart from the day he pitched,” a source close to Sabathia told the New York Post. “The tipping point was Friday when he was at the stadium. He carried on drinking Saturday.”

Sabathia’s rehab stay will span the entirety of the 2015 MLB Playoffs. This season, he posted a 6-10 record in 29 starts with a 4.73 ERA.

Sabathia, 35, is scheduled to make $25 million next season and will have a $25 million vesting option for the 2017 season as part of a seven-year, $161 million contract.

 When Sports Doesn’t Matter

Some people may look at the timing of Sabathia’s announcement to check into rehab as a sign that he is quitting on his team. After all, his team virtually had to fight all season just to make it to this upcoming wild card game and Sabathia wasn’t really helping. However, it is important to keep in mind that sports serve as a sanctuary to many athletes. They are refuges where athletes can get away from real life problems if only for three or so hours, so when real life gets in the way of sports, sometimes the best thing for an athlete to do is to step away. Sabathia’s game has suffered since the start of the 2013 season and no one knows for sure how much of a factor alcoholism played into that.

Sabathia, a father of four, claimed that he didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t make this decision right now so he must’ve needed help because his situation was that dire. Who knows, maybe he could’ve chosen not to go into rehab and the sports world could be reporting an entirely different (and worse) story on him.

While we are yelling at our TVs because we see that players on our favorite teams are performing terribly, it is easy to forget about the simple fact that athletes are people too. Sure, they make millions more than the rest of us, but even with all their money, they still deal with the same type of issues (obviously not including finances) that the rest of us do. The Yankees organization doesn’t see Sabathia’s decision as a selfish one. In fact, they are rallying behind him. I just hope that the rest of the sports world does the same thing instead of downing him for his decision to bet