Pitcher perfect Indians ace C.C. Sabathia wins AL Cy Young

GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

CLEVELAND — Indians ace C.C. Sabathia, a fine football and basketball player, never saw choosing baseball as a difficult decision.

“That’s what guys played,” Sabathia said Tuesday after being named the American League Cy Young Award winner.

“We played football and basketball, too,” Sabathia said. “It just seemed like everybody in my neighborhood played [baseball]. It wasn’t a hard choice. I was always pretty good. It was a fun game. It just felt like it was right. My first love was always baseball.”

Sabathia, only the second Indians pitcher to be recognized as the best in the league, stuck with his first love until, at age 27, he reached the pinnacle of his profession.

“I am sitting in my office right now, looking for a spot for it,” Sa bathia said by phone from his home in Fairfield, Calif. “I’ll probably just keep it right here.”

Sabathia is the first African-American to win the AL award since Vida Blue in 1971. He has long been an outspoken advocate of finding ways to encourage children in urban areas to take up the game and sponsors a youth league in his hometown of Vallejo, Calif.

Sabathia said he was one of 35 players who met last week in New York with officials from Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association about that issue.

“We wanted to see what we can do, get some more RBI [Reviving Baseball in the  Inner City] academies and clinics going to get inner city kids interested in the game,” Sabathia said. “Hopefully, this will help.”

Sabathia’s seventh big-league season produced a 19-7 record and 3.21 ERA. He led the AL in innings pitched (241) and complete games (four) and was fifth with 209 strikeouts.

Voters from the Baseball Writers Association of America gave 19 of 28 first-place votes, and 119 points overall, to Sabathia. Josh Beckett of Boston, a 20-game winner, was second with 86 points, and league ERA champion John Lackey of the Angels (3.01) was third.

Sabathia’s teammate, Fausto Carmona, finished fourth. This was Carmona’s first full season in the big leagues.

“To know that, two out of five days, a team is going to have to pony up against those two guys ... we’re going to be all right,” Indians general manager Mark Shapiro said.

The only other Indians pitcher to win a Cy Young Award was Gaylord Perry in 1972. Voting for the award began in 1956.

“Being able to stay healthy, run out there every fifth day, take the ball and be in control of the game — that’s what I am most proud of,” Sabathia said.

The Indians will pay Sabathia a $250,000 bonus for winning, and his 2008 salary jumps from $9 million to $11 million.

The team is preparing to offer a contract extension to Sabathia, who can declare free agency at the end of next season.

“I don’t think it [the award] will have any effect either way,” Sabathia said of the negotiations.

Shapiro said, “This year, he crossed the final gates of being a true No. 1. The underlying facts remain the same, and they will remain the same. We have the utmost respect and appreciation for C.C. and a strong desire to keep him here.”

The ballots are submitted at the conclusion of the regular season. That fact certainly worked in Sabathia’s favor as he struggled during the postseason (8.80 ERA in three starts), losing to Beckett and the Red Sox twice during the American League Championship Series.

“Beckett had a great year and an even better postseason,” Sabathia said. “The first two [games], I can definitely say I was trying to do too much. I was trying to make perfect pitches instead of just gong out and pitching like I had all year.

“I just got a chance to watch the games. It’s tough, but we had a good year. We were a young team, and we have pretty much the same guys coming back, the core guys. We’ve been a team that has learned from bad experiences. Hopefully, we can learn from this one.”