Sabathia gives Yankees soul

Team's new ace willing to speak out

In a bizarre spectacle of arrogance and denial, the Mets and the Yankees are hosting back-to-back introductions for their multimillion-dollar pitchers this week.

Even as the nation continues to reel from the effect of economic body blows, the New York baseball teams lavish money on free-agent pitchers.

On Wednesday, the Mets introduced Francisco Rodriguez, the closer they signed to a three-year, $37 million contract last week. On Thursday, the Yankees introduced starter CC Sabathia, this winter's free-agent gem. The Yankees signed Sabathia to one of the richest contracts in baseball history: seven years, $161 million.

Which team made the best deal for itself on the pitching front? My vote goes to the Yankees.

While the Mets plugged an embarrassing hole in their bullpen, the Yankees plugged an even larger hole -- a hole in their soul.

Sabathia represents a potential breath of fresh air in a stale, cliche-ridden Yankees clubhouse, one with little personality and even less passion, and no recent championships to compensate for those deficiencies.

Sabathia is a good-natured star who has strong feelings about issues and isn't afraid to share them. This is an anomaly in a clubhouse famous for antiseptic professionalism.

In 2007, for example, Sabathia complained about the lack of African-American players in the majors. He even pointed a finger at Major League Baseball for not doing all that it could to increase the numbers.

Sabathia, who was traded from the Cleveland Indians to the Milwaukee Brewers last season, bemoaned the lack of black Americans in baseball.

"There aren't very many African-American players, and it's not just in here, it's everywhere," he told The Associated Press. "It's not just a problem -- it's a crisis."

He said later: "I think Major League Baseball should do something about it. I don't know exactly what they could be doing, but I know it's not enough."

Sabathia sponsors the North Vallejo Little League in Northern California, which among other things provides equipment for 175 young people from his hometown.

Abe Hobbs, Sabathia's coach at Vallejo High, said Sabathia would be "a great addition, not just to the team, but in the community."

Finally, a Yankee with an opinion.

"He's not the kind of person who will talk outside the clubhouse, but if something is troubling his heart, he'll say something," Hobbs said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "In the clubhouse, he'll let his voice be heard. He's very respectful, and he's a fierce, fierce competitor."

Gary Sheffield was the last great truth-teller in the clubhouse. Before that, the passion was generated by the Paul O'Neill Yankees, who played with a verve that has been missing. It's no coincidence titles have been missing as well.

You can sign a mountain of A-Rods for a mountain of dollars and get a mountain of great-looking stats and have a molehill of championships to show for it.

During a radio interview Wednesday morning, Kevin Millar made a number of candid insights about baseball in general and the Yankees in particular. Millar spent three seasons with the Boston Red Sox and has a pretty thorough understanding of the Yankees. Millar played for the Baltimore Orioles last season.

"That team can play, but something's missing," he said. "When you play against them and you look over there -- other than they didn't pitch very well -- something was missing."

The something was chemistry. The Yankees need more than a transfusion of talent -- they get one of those every season. Sabathia's greatest contribution may well be supplying that hard-to-define missing "something."

He has been a hit with teammates everywhere he has gone, in Cleveland for seven-plus seasons and with Milwaukee for three months when he picked up the Brewers and carried them into the playoffs.

If his tenures in Cleveland and Milwaukee are any indication, Sabathia could help decorporatize the Yankees' clubhouse. He does things like calling up teammates on the road to go to lunch, inviting teammates out for dinner after a game.

"Those things matter when you have men on first and third in the eighth inning, and you have teammates pulling for each other," Millar said, "and not hoping that a teammate makes an out so you can play."

The common wisdom is that a team can buy Gold Gloves, big bats and strong arms, but it can't buy chemistry.

The Yankees may have finally figured out how to buy that, too.