I feel like I was exhausted of hiding. “I just felt such a relief that everybody knows now….” “It hurts me deeply to do this now, but I owe it to myself and to my family to get myself right”.
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The baseball aspect of Sabathia’s rehab is kinda uncomfortable to talk about, but it is something we should discuss. Since he’s leaving rehab relatively soon, it should have no impact on his offseason routine. No, this is the first time? “I pretty much just hid it, would be walking around hung over and sick all the time and still going through the motions”. (The 35-year-old starter said he never drank before games he pitched and his last start came days earlier against the Boston Red Sox.) On the final day of the season, October 4, Sabathia reached the breaking point. “Kind of binge-drinking where I was going on for a whole weekend”. “And I was kind of battling it without any help”. “I think he gets it. He’s a smart kid”. “It’s not that I can’t ask anybody to not drink around me”.
Like the aging pitcher he is who needs something different to get hitters out, Sabathia says he is more equipped to turn back the demons that check into the hotel with him.
“I understand where, you know, fans would be upset and people would not understand”, Sabathia continued. He ended up staying the course, however, stating, per Feinsand: “Really at that time is when I felt like I needed it, but it was right in the middle of the season”.
“I can’t do this anymore, ” Sabathia remembers telling himself that Sunday morning.
The baseball player, who was interviewed alongside his wife, said he understood the shocked reaction of Yankee fans, but urged people to realize that alcoholism is a disease. “When I came up to visit him I told him Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Andy Pettitte and Brian McCann all called my phone”.
He said his teammates knew he drank, but did not know the depths of the problem, since most of the time he would be alone in the hotel room.
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“Torii Hunter, Dave – “Big Papi’s” been calling me a lot”, Sabathia said. I like this cc. This year Sabathia spent them in rehab rather than on vacation. Have you heard from them.
