It's official — Sabathia is a jackass

if we’re lucky, he won’t have to worry about it.

CC eats baggage for lunch.

AND trot out the same trite quotes.

Surprised? No. Was I positive this was going to happen? No. I don’t even attempt to predict how a man I know literally nothing about will act, positively or negatively. Anybody who thinks they can read the soundbites of athletes, watch them on tv, and have a predictive knowledge of their personalities is kidding themselves.

I think if it was any other offseason, he’d have gone somewhere else. The discrepancy between what New York can pay this year and what others can is even more ridiculous than normal.

Read the headline.

It’s not a surprise today, it’s simply official today.

The sheer size of your Paesan-English dictionary still astounds me.

Baseball is deeply, deeply broken and when people within the game who have the luxury to illuminate or at least not reinforce that and they don’t, they’re acting like jackasses.

Also, you said you’d go now. Don’t be “that guy.”

I also can argue the point that we are being no more irrational than CC. Maybe CC is going to do something of great value with the extra $60 million he will get: fund inner-city schools, buy food for the needy, buy an island where Robert Mugabe can abdicate, or something else that will have great impact and value. As it is, the only thing I see from CC is greed – and there is nothing more irrational than greed.

Yes, it is wrong. Contrary to all those T-shirts from the 1990’s, Basesball is not life. Life is life.

If baseball was a John Hughes, brat pack movie, NYY would Andrew McCarthy and Cleveland would be Jon Cryer

but now we have the opportunity to make out in front of them with a much hotter girl at the afterprom party at his house

If its not late October or November they probably don’t care.

That’s cuz they knew this was gonna happen. This is old news – like early August – over at Pinstripe Alley.

Let’s not lump CC in the Manny and Thome. A

Not to get into this conversation again, but Lebron’s situation is completely different. In order to leave Cleveland he’ll have to leave at least $30 million on the table and go to an inferior team. It’s called a soft cap, Donny. It’s the NBA, the records room, B1, using the whole fist …

cc is way beyond being a sure fire prospect to garner any attention from you.

We’ll talk after he does his little fist pump after striking out Grady in the ninth inning with two on after a complete game 1-0 victory.

Judging by the press coverage I’m likely to hear on local NY media over the course of the night, I’m likely to be right there with you by morning.

I don’t hate him, I’m just saying he’s a jackass.

“When it came down to it, really thinking about what I wanted, having the chance to win every year. That’s something that I talk about all the time. That’s the bottom line for me. There really was no other place to go.”

Jack-ass quote, even if you’re jesus christ himself.

I feel completely the opposite: I hate him personally but not professionally. Professionally, he did what most professions do: seek out the best deal he can get for plying his trade, which is, in fact, throwing a baseball real hard. And he signed a contract with the team who was willing to pay the most for a guy who throws a baseball real hard. Personally, though, its quite clear that nothing was more important to him than the money. On top of that, he insults us by claiming there is some other reason why he’s wearing pinstripes. So, professionally, I guess he has my respect. Personally, not so much. At first, I thought he might just be a scumbag, but based on the evidence, I’d say he’s a real jackass.

he’s spouting Yankee boilerplate, because he pitches for the Yankees now

Wait, wait, you’re defense of CC’s behavior is that “he’s just following orders”, is that right?

You know…. this is really rational.

I hate CC……………………………. (professionally)

This might be true for everyone on the board – we know CC only in the manner of seeing him on a pitcher’s mound (and sometimes at the plate). Whether you call that personally or professionally, I don’t know. What I do know is that CC will be on a pitcher’s mound wearing a Yankees uniform solely because he wanted an extra $40-60 million. I hate the Yankees, and I find it hard to root for a guy who says he cherishes his family on the west coast – yet chooses to move the family to NYC where is can be challenging in that media environment. He has every right to make that choice – it’s a free country. Maybe the environment is wonderful for his family – that’ll be great.

Just as much so, I have every right to hate him. I don’t have the right to spit in his face. I don’t have the right to pour beer on his wife at the stadium. I don’t have the right to do harm to him and his family. But, when he steps on the mound in that Yankees uniform I have the right to boo him.

That’s hockey right?

I’m trying to get a trip together. What are you thinking?

This seems like a big deal. Can an agency get away with this kind of ethical misconduct?

Greetings to Larry Holmes Boulevard.

Some Yankees who don’t play hard every day: Bobby Abreu, Jason Giambi, Melky Cabrera, Damaso Marte, Shelley Duncan.

You live in Easton? I grew up in Bethlehem.

You sign with the Yankees, you’re a jackass. It’s that simple.

On the other hand, I heard audio of CC speaking to reporters on XM last night. He described looking at a house with his wife and a real estate agent. The agent, who must have been from Mars BTW, says, “So I hear you’re a professional athlete. Which team do you play for?”

CC said that when he said, “The Yankees,” he got a chill up his spine.

He drank the Kool Aid. He’s an Asshole!

Maybe he’s thinking that if he didn’t have to compete for it and earn it, he actually would have something left in October.

This part of the argument was the worst. Like it subtracts from the player’s competitiveness if he goes to the better team.

I’m not in love with the tone, either. I, as evidenced by things I wrote, don’t just sort of like CC. He’s my first baseball love, from when I was just a kid. I grew up with him.

But, this is the tone of sports commentary nowadays; it’s not like it’s limited to discussions of the Yankees. In fact, I could be criticized for using this tone relatively often against miscreants like Ben Francisco.

What about the tone don’t you like? I think the argument is laid out pretty simply. If you agree with the logic, what is there specifically that you even disagree with? Do you agree with the argument, but disagree with actually stating it out loud?

Frankly, if he would signed that same contract with, let’s say, the Angels, no one would have really cared. But he happened to sign with the Evil Empire, the team that’s stood between the Indians and at least 5 pennants, the franchise that landed Sabathia just because they happened to reside in the media capital of the US. The Yankees have always been a rival, but in the last 15 years they’ve become more than that.

Personally, I don’t have any hard feelings towards Sabathia – it’s been obvious for two years that he was going to be gone. If by chance I’m at the game where CC makes his first start in Cleveland as a non-Indian, I’m going to give him a standing O when he’s introduced and then treat him the same as any other Yankee.

Let’s try to subtract the jealousy.

That’s called a World Series championsip.

And yes, I’d like one in my lifetime please.

Yep it would be pure capitolism – if the Yankees only played intra-squad games. But they make their money by selling ticket to games between their team and others owners teams. They are partners in an enterprise – partners with 31 other owners.

Frankly I’m a little tired of this Rush Limbaugh – like argument. Take a look at the NBA – now that’s capitolism.

Let’s hope CC joins that club

I bear no ill will towards Brewers fans, none at all. But let’s be serious here — your experience with C.C. was essentially a fairy tale, and as C.C. himself said yesterday, it would be unrealistic to expect any pitcher to continue pitching at that level for even one more month, let alone multiple seasons.

You didn’t go through the good and the bad with the guy, you didn’t cheer him on while he grew up as a baseball player and as a man. You don’t have the same stake in him that we do. On top of that, you don’t have a rivalry between two franchises, continuously in the same two cities, stretching back over a century. (That is a distinction shared only among the Yankees, Indians, Red Sox and White Sox, if I’m not mistaken.) And while the Yankees-Red Sox hegemony cheats all the other teams out of certain players, they will never directly shove you out of a playoff spot with a half-billion in combined payrolls.

Bottom line, while I would expect you to be in sympathy with these sentiments, I wouldn’t expect Brewers fans to have quite the same contempt for the Yankees and disgust over the whole situation. I am glad that two small-market clubs found a way to help each other out at the expensive of all the other clubs, though, so we can enjoy that small fact.

While I understand where you’re coming from, Jay said it best – you guys lived a fairy tale with him for a short period of time. I think the only thing that would come close to the feeling 99% of Clevelanders are currently feeling is this – after spending 8 years watching Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder struggle, grow, and finally develop into league-dominating powers, the Dodgers go out and offer each of them 3 times what the Brewers could afford. That’s about the only thing I can think of that comes close to the feeling Clevelanders have.

Man you’re an NL fan – what the hell would you know about the Yankees?

Man, that Reds Reporter blog always sends us the real charmers, eh?

Jacob, my man, it is exactly my point that in taking that contract from the Yankees, you do get to have the $161 million, and you do get to go to the playoffs more often than not … but you also make yourself into a jackass. It’s a package deal, and he took it.

Having said that, there are many players who have signed megabucks deals for teams other than the Yankees, and I don’t think those players consider themselves losers. Kerry Wood sure didn’t seem like a loser in his press conference yesterday. Just because none of those players are on the Reds doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Wrong

Could you move this comment to the fanshot about Jack Wilson? Jay’s given us a quota and I think this is the gem to get us there.

Ronster, you know nothing about how this game works.

The Steinbrenner family is not spending one dime of their own money on any of these contracts. They are funded by the fact that the Yankees receive $200 million more in annual revenue than the average club. They receive that extra money only because they are in an absolutely massive media market, which economists say can (and should) support SIX major league teams instead of only two.

I can promise you, if the Dolans could combine the media markets of three teams — let’s say, Detroit plus Cleveland plus Milwaukee — then they too would have the revenue to support contracts like these. This is not even counting the massive revenue that New Yankee Stadium will bring in, over and above what other stadiums in other markets could ever yield.

Thank you for your insight

I have literally no idea what this means and I’m legitimately trying to understand it. “Quantifying Bad”? What does that mean?

Can’t we quantitatively evaluate “bad” in all kinds of situations? An OPS+ of 45 over 300 ABs: Bad. Isn’t that quantitative?

Oh, I just checked ol’ Omar out. He’s a Pinstripe Alley poster. Who woudda guessed?