Appreciate CC Sabathia in his Final Year

Let’s get one more for the big fella. (Elsa/Getty)Something felt off the day the Yankees hosted the Houston Astros in the Bronx for the 2015 Wild Card Game. Even before the Yanks were shut out by Dallas Keuchel in a masterful 3 hit performance, the atmosphere was subdued. That the Yankees were led by Alex Rodriguez, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann surely didn’t help; this wasn’t a team, like the opposing Astros, that felt like its best days were yet to come. But there was something else: a day earlier, CC Sabathia had checked himself into rehab for alcohol abuse.

It’s hard to remember whether it felt like we’d truly seen the last of CC, but it certainly felt like CC’s days as an effective…