CC Sabathia tale is a period piece

TAMPA, Fla. – CC Sabathia now comes in pinstripes, but he's still without the dots.

For the 7½ seasons he pitched for the Cleveland Indians, Sabathia always was known as "C.C." Then last July 7, he was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, and the dots after the initials disappeared.

The New York Yankees paid $161 million this winter to sign Sabathia as a free agent, but that wasn't enough to buy them punctuation. The Yankees' spring roster lists him as CC, and apparently it's going to stay that way.

There is no shortage of famous folks known by their initials instead of their first names. Circus showmen (P.T. Barnum), financiers (J.P. Morgan, E.F. Hutton), children's authors (A.A. Milne, J.K. Rowling), quarterbacks (Y.A. Tittle), poets (W.H. Auden, e.e. cummings), department-store magnates (J.C. Penney), architects (I.M. Pei), movie pioneers (D.W. Griffith), bluesmen (B.B. King), accused murderers (O.J. Simpson) and curmudgeons (W.C. Fields). Without exception, they all came with dots.

In 1962, former president Harry S. Truman briefly caused a stir when he said the period should be omitted after the "S" because it didn't stand for anything – but he probably was joking, and history has retained the period.

Then along came CC.

"I have no clue how that even started or anything,'' Sabathia said here the other day. "When I got traded to Milwaukee, they called and asked if I wanted the dots. I said, 'I really don't care,' and they took the dots out. Before, it was always 'C period, C period.' "

Brewers media relations director Mike Vassallo said the dots were deleted at the request of Sabathia's personal publicist, Kathy Jacobson.

"CC couldn't care less about the dots,'' Vassallo wrote in an email. "It was the PR person who told us. It was blown way out of proportion.''

Jacobson, who also counts San Francisco Giants pitcher Barry Zito among her clients, said it was never meant to be an issue.

"I was fact-checking the Brewers' press release for some of the nonstandard stuff, like the spelling of the names of CC's kids,'' Jacobson said. "I always knew he wrote his name 'CC,' so I thought as long as I was correcting names, I made it just 'CC.' It was very innocent. Then Mike Vassallo made an announcement at the press conference, and it became a bigger-than-life thing.''

The pitcher's full name is Carsten Charles Sabathia. When he signs his name, he says, he doesn't use the initials at all. He writes Carsten.

"I don't really care,'' he said, "but I guess it's a big deal.''

What do the grammarians think? According to The Chicago Manual of Style, all initials given with a name should "for convenience and consistency" be followed by a period, even if they are not abbreviations of names.

''Basically, what you have here is not so much a question of grammar as of prevailing usage,'' wrote Marvin Hightower, senior writer and archivist in the Harvard University Office of News and Public Affairs, in response to a question about CC.

"On this side of the pond, initials for titles and proper names are typically marked by periods. Back in merry old England, however, writers of the mother tongue dispense with them. If you look at British periodicals and books, you will regularly see “Mr/Mrs/Ms” instead of “Mr./Mrs./Ms.” Similarly, you will find “JMW Turner/CP Snow/CS Lewis/Jane Q Public” and the like.

"Your readers across the pond will perceive nothing out of the ordinary, and those on this side do need to embrace the wider dimensions of the great language we share. It is, after all, the closest thing to a world language that this Babelfish sphere has ever known.''

The Yankees also signed another pitcher who goes by his initials, A.J. Burnett.

"Does A.J. got the periods or not?'' Sabathia asked, chuckling.

There are 15 players on big-league rosters this spring who go by initials – including one, Boston outfielder J.D. Drew, whose initials are in reverse order of his given name (David Jonathan).

Sabathia already is the most successful pitcher to go by his initials. He has the best career earned-run average (3.66) and the most wins (117, 10 more than Houston's J.R. Richard), and is second in strikeouts (1,393, 100 fewer than Richard).

Effective pitching is why Sabathia and his wife, Amber, named their newborn daughter "Cyia," in October.

"She was named after the Cy Young Award,'' Jacobson said.

The no-dots approach works for Sabathia's Web site, CCSabathia52.com, and his charitable foundation, which is called "PitCCh In.'' And there's a good chance "CC" will be passed along to another generation. His son is named Carsten Charles Sabathia III.