There was a lot of promising stuff on CC Sabathia's scouting report when he left Vallejo High School.
He was a great all-around basketball player, playing power forward and contributing in many different areas. He was recruited to UCLA and University of Hawaii for football, eventually committing to the latter. Baseball was clearly where he excelled more than anything else, with jaw-dropping numbers both on the mound and at the plate. He was hitting 90 miles per hour as a freshman and was already six feet tall at that point.
What wasn't on his scouting report was that his mom really wanted to get him out of the house. That little factoid, however, was one that may have expedited the process of getting him signed to a rookie deal with the Cleveland Indians, who drafted him in the first round of the 1998 amateur draft.
"The best part about me getting drafted and that whole thing is, a month later, I'm still not signed," Sabathia said on the latest episode of "R2C2," featuring his mother, Marge, as a special guest. "So it's like the end of June now, and... I used to be in the hallway at the front door going through my windup. So I'm doing that and one day she's (his mother) coming in the house and hits me in my back, and she's like 'what the f--- you doing standing in front of the door?' "
Sabathia was practicing his windup — which clearly paid off — but it was the last straw for Marge. It wasn't a lack of love for her son that made her realize he had to go — she played catcher for him and was a humongous supporter throughout his upbringing — rather, it was probably his readiness for the bigs, and perhaps his size, that forced her to make her next move.
"And she's like, 'let me get you out of here... you gotta go,' " Sabathia explained. "Listen, she called Dan O'Dowd (Indians assistant GM) right then! She called the assistant GM and... told him to get the scout down here. Let's get this boy signed, I gotta get him out of here.
"I signed that night... We left July 2nd."
Marge, fighting through her own laughter as well as CC's and co-host Ryan Ruocco's, confirmed the story. Sabathia didn't even have an agent at that point in time, but when you've got mom there, who needs one?
"No, she was the agent," Sabathia said. "We signed that night and we left two days later to go to Cleveland... that was two days after she told me we gotta get you the f--- out of this house."
Sabathia later added that it was a day he'd never forget.
"She was so mad at me, like I was just blocking the door," Sabathia said. "So she was like, it was almost at the point where I got this big-ass kid in my house and he ain't got nothing to do, he ain't going to college, so let me get him up on out of my house."
Who was more thankful that she did so — herself or the Cleveland Indians — is up for debate. But considering he ascended the minor leagues and became an All-Star in just his third full season in majors, it looks like a move that benefitted every party involved.
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