Why C.C. Sabathia's Public Recovery Matters

Nothing is less significant than the baseball played in March, which made it that much more startling when I got chills watching C.C. Sabathia pitching, playing, and working out during spring training. There was a time when Sabathia's pitching could elicit that reaction, although even when Sabathia was one of the best pitchers in the game he was more about power, consistency, and work ethic than jaw-dropping stuff. As he enters his 16th season in the bigs, Sabathia is no longer that pitcher, but his significance, to me and many other people, goes beyond what he does on the mound.

Sabathia came to spring training in the once unimaginable, objectively unenviable, and supremely humbling position of fighting for the fifth spot in the Yankees' starting rotation. He's a six-time All-Star and a Cy Young Award winner, which—along with his $15 million salary—makes him an unlikely underdog. While veteran pitchers with monster contracts generally keep their rotation spots, Sabathia also put up a 4.73 ERA last season and struggled with consistently decreasing velocity. He is not what he once was, but that's precisely why he means so much.

For C.C. Sabathia, 2016 is a brand new season in more ways than one: it's the first that he will take the field as a sober man. Last fall, on the eve of his team's first (and only) game of the postseason, Sabathia announced that he would be leaving the team's clubhouse for the remainder of the season to seek treatment for his alcoholism. Although he was unlikely to play much of a role in the Yankees postseason whether he was with the team or not, Sabathia was criticized for his timing; as it happened, the Yankees lost their Wild Card Elimination game against the Houston Astros the next day.

That hardly matters, though, when it comes to the question of Sabathia's decision to get help. Given baseball's prevailing culture, in which players are expected to put the game before everything else and routinely take heat for objectively reasonable things like leaving the team to be with their wives while they're in labor, Sabathia's decision seems doubly brave. Athletes push through injuries, miss out on family obligations, and play during illness in the understanding that nothing matters more than the game. But Sabathia did something radical. He sent the message that there is something that matters more than the game, the postseason, or the title—his health, and his responsibility to the people in his life who are counting on him.

The statements Sabathia has made in the months since have driven that point home. His statement announcing his decision to enter treatment included the following passage:

Being an adult means being accountable. 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.

It's worth noting that, for all the griping about Sabathia's timing, none of it came from the Yankees clubhouse. That group, from general manager Brian Cashman to manager Joe Girardi, supported Sabathia's decision to leave just as the playoffs were beginning. "What C.C. is dealing with is a life issue. It is bigger than the game [Tuesday] night," Cashman said at the time. Contrast the Yankees' humane and empathetic reaction to the way the Angels management were all too happy to throw Josh Hamilton to the wolves after his cocaine relapse last season—it's night and day.

Credit where it's due to the Yankees, but understand that Sabathia is brave AF. Understand that in sports, a culture rife with and driven by toxic masculinity, admitting weakness is a sin. Understand, too, that toughing out a few more bottomed-out weeks before seeking help would generally be seen as not just acceptable but perversely tough. And yet, despite all that, Sabathia did what he needed to do. He acknowledged, in his first post-rehab interview, that players and fans would have been more understanding if it were an injury, but "alcoholism was tough for people to swallow."

It is. Many people still don't understand alcoholism and addiction, or they see it as the result of weakness or a lack of self-control—two things, incidentally, that athletes are not supposed to have. , especially in baseball restraint and command is the name of the game. One look at the discussions around whether it's appropriate to admire (or celebrate) a home run proves as much. Addiction, which is characterized by—or at least caricatured as—a lack of restraint, doesn't fit.

This all makes what Sabathia has done, and is doing, that much more meaningful. As a baseball fan in recovery, I am in awe of the strength it took for Sabathia not just to face down his disease but to talk openly about the issue, even when he was in the thick of it. He didn't wait until he was sober awhile to say, "This is a thing I struggled with, and now I'm better." He didn't blame his postseason absence on the injured knee that had been bothering him all season long. Instead, he told the truth from the get-go, and his team stood behind him. You don't have to have endured similar struggles to appreciate the bravery in this, but it resounds especially loudly if you have.

While there's been much more of a national conversation around addiction in recent years, admitting you have a problem still carries a ton of stigma. People look at me differently when I tell them I'm an alcoholic. As an alcoholic, I don't often see myself reflected in a positive light when I turn on the television, and I definitely don't see myself reflected in my heroes. It's either stereotypes of the angry, homeless drunk, or the cautionary tale in the Lifetime movie of the week—people whose lives were lost to the bottle. Stories of redemption are out there, but they're not the driving narrative around the disease. To think about alcoholism, in our culture, is to think about struggles lost.

Sabathia fills a much-needed gap in this conversation. He is a public figure, someone admired by many people, me included. He shatters the stereotype that athletes are superhuman, or lack any demons of their own off the field. And he has chosen to be open about his journey to recovery as he walks it, as opposed to reflecting back on it. In doing so, he provides accountability for himself and his sobriety. And like Scott Proctor before him, the very fact that Sabathia is working through his recovery in public shows the world that admitting you need help is not the end of anything. Instead, it is the beginning of a new chapter, and the continuation of the life you've already been living.

When I watch Sabathia's humbled return to the sport he was born to play, I am reminded that with recovery all things are possible. When I see someone I regard so highly walk the path that I've walked myself, I feel less invisible. Sabathia's journey validates my own, simply for happening where everyone can see it, and also redeems and informs those of countless other sports fans watching from their couches, or from a treatment bed, or after drinking a six-pack they swore they weren't going to buy. Sabathia, like the rest of us, is human.

In doing what they did, in the way they did it, Sabathia and the Yankees gave other people permission to ask for help. What Sabathia is doing now, even as he fights for his baseball life, is showing the world that no one is immune from addiction, that "real men" can (and do) ask for help when they need it, and that there's no shame in taking care of yourself. In sports, and not just in sports, this is a big deal. And so it's a big deal whether C.C. wins that fifth spot or not.

I'm a Red Sox fan, and as such am wired to root against anyone in pinstripes. But as a person in recovery—and as a person, full stop—I'll enjoy every inning that Sabathia steps onto the mound. Every game that he pitches this year will be a testament to the power and struggle of recovery. Every day he shows up to play assures many people who need to know it that there's life after addiction. What Sabathia does on the field is less important than the resilience he's shown in coming back to do it sober. Anyone can cheer for that.