C.C. Sabathia Jr.
*C.C. Sabathia Jr. was born on this date in 1980. He is a Black former MLB professional baseball pitcher.
Carsten Charles Sabathia was born in Vallejo, California, and attended Vallejo High School, where he played baseball, basketball, and football. As a teenager, Sabathia was the top high school prospect in Northern California. In football, he was an all-conference tight end. He signed a letter of intent to attend the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and to play baseball and football for the Hawaiʻi Rainbow Warriors. Sabathia graduated from Vallejo High School in 1998 and went directly from high school to minor league baseball.
He made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians in 2001 and placed second in the American League (AL) Rookie of the Year Award voting. Sabathia played the first seven and a half seasons of his career with the Indians, with whom he won the 2007 Cy Young Award. He led the Indians to the 2007 AL Central Division title and their first postseason berth since his rookie year. Following a trade, Sabathia played the second half of the 2008 season with the Milwaukee Brewers, helping them make the playoffs for the first time in 26 years.
In 2008, Sabathia signed a seven-year, $161 million contract with the New York Yankees, led all of MLB in wins in both 2009 and 2010, and won a World Series championship in 2009. He was also voted the 2009 AL Championship Series Most Valuable Player. After mid-career struggles attributed to lost fastball velocity, chronic knee injuries, and alcoholism, Sabathia again found success in the late 2010s after reinventing himself as a control pitcher before retiring after the 2019 season.
During his career, Sabathia was named an All-Star six times and won the Warren Spahn Award three consecutive times (2007–2009). In 2017, Sabathia became the all-time AL leader in strikeouts by a left-handed pitcher. On April 30, 2019, he became the seventeenth pitcher in MLB history to reach 3,000 strikeouts. When he retired following the end of the 2019 season, he led all active Major League players in career wins, career innings pitched, and career strikeouts. With 251 career victories, Sabathia is tied with Bob Gibson for the second-most wins by a Black pitcher in major league history (behind Ferguson Jenkins); he was the first pitcher to debut in the 21st century and post at least 250 career wins in regular-season play, who played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). Sabathia batted and threw left-handed. In 2025, Sabathia was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
