It took a while for MLB Hall of Famer CC Sabathia to get into golf, but once he set foot on the course, he says, he basically never left.
On this week’s episode of Subpar, Sabathia engaged in a lot of golf talk with hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz, but the trio covered plenty of MLB topics too. Most notably: the definitive answer Sabathia had for the best player he’s ever played with in the ballpark.
Spoiler alert: It’s Alex Rodriguez.
“Hands down, not even close,” Sabathia said. “He’s just the smartest guy I ever played with. There would be times where I’d be in the 6th inning and say, somebody like Delmon Young is coming up to hit, and he’d be like, hey, he took the first two fastballs at bat. He’s gonna be swinging right here, throw a change-up.
“So you know, just stuff like that,” Sabathia continued. “The way he watched the game, obviously, his athletic ability is off the charts, but he’s a baseball savant, and I’ve never played with a guy that had that high of an IQ and that, you know, physically gifted.”
In golf, we often talk about which player we’d want to make a 10-foot putt to save our life, and Stoltz posed a baseball version of that question to Sabathia.
“For all your career, if you had the game on the line, 2 outs, spot on the 9th, the guy’s gotta get a hit. Is he the guy you’d pick?” he asked.
“Derek Jeter,” Sabathia responded. “All day.”
For more from Sabathia, including why he wants a re-do round at Pine Valley and how he ended up with $15,000 in cash in his pockets after a win, check out the full episode below.
