Picture it. You have just been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, joining the most exclusive association in the history of sports. CC Sabathia, considered a forbidding left-hander for two decades-plus between the AL lineups, snagged 251 wins and a Cy Young Award. The family load is packed with excitement, and they’re all on their way to Cooperstown for what is supposed to be the most magical weekend in all of Sabathia’s baseball career. But you know what they say about best-laid plans: sometimes even Hall of Famers just cannot escape the mundane.

Nothing tops it off like a stranded adventure on the roadside with your entire fambam. That’s what happened to CC Sabathia en route to Cooperstown on Wednesday afternoon. Sabathia garnered upwards of 86.8% of the votes, thus far surpassing the 75% needed for election, while the car never got that memo about safe passage to Cooperstown. The large lefty ended up in the worst imaginable situation for anyone to fathom – with car troubles! So timely!

Sabathia’s Twitter timeline told the entire story like a perfectly scripted comedy. “Car broke down on the way to Cooperstown 🤣🤣🤣 Anyone headed that way?” he posted, showing that sense of humor that endeared him to teammates throughout his career. The tweets started optimistically at 11:54 am with “Cooperstown bound today 🤞🏾,” followed by a lighthearted 12:09 pm update about packing like he was “going for 3 months.”

Want to guess what came next? By 8:22pm, reality hit with that car breakdown tweet that had baseball fans scrambling to help their hero. The former Cy Young winner eventually made it safely to Cooperstown, tweeting his gratitude: “Made it to Cooperstown!! Damn, y’all are some real ones to offer rides and everything. Much love! It’s all part of the HOF memories.”

This wasn’t exactly Sabathia’s first run into roadblocks on big stages. In September 2018, the big southpaw faced yet a different roadblock when he deliberately beaned Tampa Bay’s Jesus Sucre, in retaliation for a high and tight pitch thrown at his teammate Austin Romine. That ejection turned into a barrier for the $500,000 bonus that would have been payable if he’d reached another two innings to meet 155 innings total. Sabathia put loyalty to his teammate over money, an attitude that would later bring fans to offer him rides to Cooperstown. The Yankees eventually did him right and gave him the bonus anyway, proving sometimes the world really is out there to reward a good deed.

CC Sabathia’s Road to Glory Goes Beyond Just a Car Ride

In yet another offbeat means of making his fortune, his journey from that broken-down vehicle into Cooperstown almost perfectly epitomizes the entire Hall of Fame saga. The baseball world celebrated the day CC Sabathia claimed his rightful seat next to the game immortals, gaining Hall of Fame entry in the first ballot this past January with a whopping 86.8 percent vote. Sabathia, the favorite Yankees ace, is now only the third Black pitcher to be inducted among these legends, alongside Bob Gibson and Fergie Jenkins, into the most exclusive league in baseball.

Quite humbly, Sabathia offers his thoughts on the great achievement: “When I was playing, I wasn’t pitching to go to the Hall of Fame,” Sabathia recalled this week. “I was pitching to just win games. This is just icing on the cake. I’m honored and blessed to have people consider me to be a Hall of Famer, but that wasn’t ever the goal. The goal was just to perform at the highest level as I could every single day.”

The big lefty anticipates sharing this milestone moment with his loved ones, one thing about it he hated. “I have a lot of anxiety about the speech. If anybody knows me, I don’t like to talk in front of people so a ten-minute speech in front of a crowd is going to be interesting, but I’m ready to be in the moment and be excited and be with my family,” Sabathia said.

The 2025 MLB Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will take place on July 27 at 1:30 P.M. EST, the moment at which Sabathia makes the transition from an anxious speaker to a Cooperstown great.