Publisher's Synopsis
How does it feel to be born with enormous gifts, even in a life shadowed by tragedy? What does it mean when we squander those gifts? What new gifts do we find in that loss? Carsten Charles "CC" Sabatihia's last season was 2019 with the New York Yankees. Baseball had been his life since he was a kid raised by his mother and grandmother in gritty, baseball-obsessed Vallejo, California. He was a star by the time he was a preteen and in the major leagues by the time he was a teenager. Everything he knew about how to be a person--an adult, a husband and father, a leader--he learned in rhythm with the baseball season, the every-fifth-day high-intensity spotlight of a starting pitcher. But somehow he did it--while dealing with one of the sport's most turbulent eras: rising racism in a sport with diminishing black presence; the era of performance-enhancing drugs; and the increasing pressures and capriciousness of sports owners who moved players around like chattel. At the same time he bumped up against the biggest stars of the game as teammates, friends, and rivals. But his biggest struggle was with his own body and mind: born with enormous gifts he dealt with steady and eventually alarming breakdown of his own body and his rising addiction in a world that encouraged and enabled it. 2019 would be his final season. He was a veteran star and one of the most beloved players in the game, a Cy Young Award winner and World Series champion who was also a leader, philanthropist, and fan favourite. In a league increasingly populated by world-class athletes, CC was beloved for his vulnerability, frailty, and humanity, never moreso than in 2019, when he started the season still recovering from heart surgery. He was determined to go out on his own terms--but still had a final lesson awaiting him in human frailty and in the gifts that come when we reconcile with our own mortality. This is a thrilling sports book about one of the iconic players of his era, a beloved star of the sport's marquee team. It's also a book about baseball-about the ins and outs of its most important and technical position and its evolution in this volatile era. But woven within is a moving, universal story about resilience and mortality and discovering what matters most.
