BALTIMORE — He was leaking oil, pint by pint, pitch by pitch, his right knee screaming at him every time he fell on it. All 6-feet, 6-inches and 300 pounds of CC Sabathia crunched down on the leg, on the knee, a sharp ache that started with his first pitch of the night and stuck around for all of the 87 that followed.
“It makes it hard to land,” Sabathia would say later. “It’s a shooting pain that goes through me every time. It makes it hard to finish pitches.”
What he wanted on this night was to finish five innings.