After a stint in alcohol rehab, New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia is doing everything possible to avoid a relapse. That includes removing the minibar from hotel rooms on road trips, which he discussed in an exclusive interview with VICE Sports.
Sabathia wrote an essay in The Player’s Tribune in which he mentions a weekend in Baltimore just before his rehab stay where he “spent most of the weekend alone in my hotel room clearing out the minibar.”
“But there’s different things that I can do now: go back to my room; read; I have different things on my computer that I can do; hang out with my teammates; I play a lot of video games. I kind of got away from that because I would just run back to my room and look for the next drink,” Sabathia tells VICE Sports.
“1000 percent, I feel like I’ve gotten a second chance and I’m not going to mess that up. I know people talk about how hard it is and things like that, but there’s no way I’m putting my family back through that. There’s no way I’m picking up another drink.”
Sabathia checked himself into rehab the day before the his team played the Houston Astros for the 2015 American League wild card.