Sabathia, Yanks' ace, is real deal

There is more to CC Sabathia than what meets the eye, which is no easy feat for a guy his size. He is more than just the No. 1 pitcher on the Yankees, he is a true ace, which involves much more. An ace is a guy who makes the other side believe he has something up his sleeve. An ace is a guy who makes your team feel like it is holding all the cards.

A true ace is the most important person on a team.

Sabathia has a special quality that makes the Yankees perfectly confident every fifth day and gives the fans reason to think they might see something special. His stuff is hot, his head is cool. He carried a perfect game through one out of the seventh inning against the epically stumbling Mariners at the Stadium Tuesday night and, as usual, he carried his team.

"Aces are hard to come by," Joe Girardi said after the 4-1 win. "He gives you distance, he shuts other clubs down, gives your bullpen the night off. He means a lot."

Defining an ace is like identifying a good piece of art: you just know one when you see one. "I don't know how I would describe an ace. I definitely consider CC one of the best pitchers in the game right now," Curtis Granderson said. "The fact that he's lefthanded, has velocity, his physical presence on the mound -- the combination of all that stuff just makes him a very dominant force. If there's a definition, that's it."

Francisco Cervelli, who caught Sabathia's career-high 14 strikeouts, including seven in a row before a downpour in the sixth caused the first of two rain delays, said: "He throws every pitch, every time. He can throw outside, inside, up or down. He's able to do a lot of things. That's CC. To me, he's the best lefty in the American League."

As Girardi repeatedly said, "We'll never know" if Sabathia would have avoided the only hit he allowed -- single in the seventh by Brendan Ryan -- had there not been a 30-minute rain delay in the sixth. We'll never know if a 14-minute rain delay caused him to walk the bases loaded with no outs in the eighth, requiring an intense rescue from David Robertson.

We do know that when lightning was flashing beyond leftfield in the fifth, it appeared that only a force of nature could stop Sabathia. He looked like vintage Louisiana Lightning, Ron Guidry, who happened to be at the Stadium Tuesday (the combined 18 strikeouts by Sabathia, Robertson and Mariano Rivera tied a franchise record for a nine-inning game, set in 1978 by Guidry).

During those first five brilliant innings, teammates didn't shy away from Sabathia, the way teammates often do to a pitcher working on a perfect game. "I wasn't getting the silent treatment because I'm just not that type of person," the pitcher said.

Given that he was so laid back afterward, a person could assume he is not the type to say "what if?" or curse fate? "I guess not," he said. "It's just one of those things."

That demeanor goes a long way toward making him an ace. It made people believe Tuesday night that he was going to be part of New York history -- against a team trying unsuccessfully to avoid it. The Mariners lost their 17th in a row, tying the worst streak by the 1962 Mets. Manager Eric Wedge didn't have the luxury of whimsically asking, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

All he can do is hand the ball this afternoon to Cy Young Award winner Felix Hernandez, who will try to raise the club's spirit and stop the bleeding. Hernandez will try to be like the pitcher who had flashes of perfection Tuesday night: an ace.