For CC Sabathia, the most important thing is a change for the better today
A day at a time starts today and not tomorrow and not when it’s convenient.
A day at a time probably should have started yesterday or the day before, all things considered, but those are gone, and that leaves today, which happens to be Monday, Oct. 5, the first hours of the rest of CC Sabathia’s life.
If that happens to line up with the first day of the Major League Baseball postseason and the day before the New York Yankees would try to backdoor their 28th world championship, then that’s going to have to wait and is of no concern for today.
Man, do we lose track of today, charging ahead like we do, stumbling forward lest we lose ground or get dragged down from behind. We pretend it’s all OK, fake it ’til we make it, promise ourselves it’ll clean itself up as long as we make it to tomorrow. And tomorrow, funny, never ever comes. There’s always tomorrow. Never enough today.
So it was on a Monday in October that CC Sabathia, big ol’ CC, decided tomorrow had come, and it would be today, a few months after his 35th birthday, a few hours before his next drink.
“Today,” he wrote in a statement, “I am checking myself into an alcohol rehabilitation center to receive the professional care and assistance needed to treat my disease.”
Today.
“I love baseball and I love my teammates like brothers,” he continued, “and I am also fully aware that I am leaving at a time when we should all be coming together for one last push toward the World Series. It hurts me deeply to do this now, but I owe it to myself and to my family to get myself right. I want to take control of my disease and I want to be a better man, father and player.”
We don’t know CC Sabathia. We know he could pitch. We know he would fight. We know he hated being average, which the past three seasons have wrought. We know that him leaving to better himself does not lop off the top of the Yankees’ rotation, or gut it, or perhaps even harm it critically.
We know that a couple months back he found himself on a video outside a Toronto nightclub that portrayed a CC Sabathia we weren’t familiar with – angry, belligerent, missing a shoe.
We know that he seemed regretful.
“Made a bad decision,” he said and seemed to mean it, a grown man in a place and a state of mind that seemed beneath him.
The worst of it, Sabathia told reporters, was his 12-year-old boy would see that video, the one of his dad teetering between control and rage.
“He has a cellphone and he’ll see this so I got to explain this to him,” he’d said. “Dad had a bad night. I made a bad decision and sometimes these things happen.”
Maybe that is part of this and maybe not. Maybe that helped lead to today, finally, before tomorrow brought more. He’ll stop his regular life for a while, or at least parts of it, to tend to himself. Sometimes we’ll ask, “Am I living my life? Or is it living me?”
Sabathia, a strong man, by all appearances a good man, perhaps is hoping to live his life again. It can only be a terribly difficult decision, one made surrounded by his family, surrounded after that by teammates and friends. Maybe they have decisions to make as well, as it is the odd man who doesn’t, and this will feather them to their own todays.
So, we root for CC Sabathia today. We applaud his courage to walk away even temporarily in order to tend to himself. And to his boy. And to all that’s out there for him after today.
“Being an adult means being accountable,” he said in his statement. “Being a baseball player means that others look up to you. I want my kids – and others who may have become fans of mine over the years – to know that I am not too big of a man to ask for help. I want to hold my head up high, have a full heart and be the type of person again that I can be proud of. And that’s exactly what I am going to do.”
He signed off saying he expects to return to baseball and the Yankees next season. That’s wonderful. We hope he does.
But that’s for tomorrow.
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