When I think about CC Sabathia, I think of a baseball fighter. A fighter who spearheaded a three-man starting rotation to the Yankees’ last World Series title in 2009. A fighter who carried the Brewers to the playoffs in 2008 by pitching on only three days’ rest for three consecutive starts. And a fighter who, quite literally, continued hurling his left arm until his body simply could not do it anymore in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the 2019 ALCS. Sabathia was a well-deserved selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday, earning 86.8 percent of the vote on his first ballot — 0.1 shy of the legendary Sandy Koufax’s percentage in 1972. Across 19 seasons after the turn of the century, Sabathia was a one-of-a-kind southpaw with his husky 6-foot-6 frame and tilted cap, baffling hitters while always flashing a big smile. By all accounts he was also one of the best pure teammates one could have, and he’d always have your back whether it was on the field or in the clubhouse. Sabathia is one of only three left-handers in baseball history to compile at least 3,000 strikeouts. At his peak from 2006-11, he had 48 more punchouts than anyone in the sport with 1,256. During that stretch he won the 2007 AL Cy Young Award for Cleveland, along with becoming one of only six pitchers to finish top five in Cy Young voting for at least five straight years. Sabathia has chosen to enter Cooperstown with a Yankees hat on his plaque. That’s fitting, because I’ll always remember him as a quintessential Yankee. When Sabathia came to the Bronx in December of 2008, he signed a $161 million deal, which at the time was the largest contract ever for a pitcher. He was the crown jewel of the Yankees’ splurge in free agency that winter. It cultivated a resurgence for a franchise that had gone almost a decade without a championship. The following season, Sabathia did what several other big-name pitchers failed to do in the New York market: Be a consistently stellar workhorse. He delivered a 3.37 ERA in 230 innings, and then his stardom reached another level in October as he allowed only eight earned runs in five starts (1.98 ERA) before the Yankees knocked off the defending champion Phillies in six games. Sabathia would go on to pitch at least 200 innings for the Yankees in five consecutive seasons before chronic knee injuries slowed him down. He also admirably turned his life around by going into rehab to overcome alcoholism in 2015, which if you don’t know much about, I highly recommend watching “Under the Grapefruit Tree: The CC Sabathia Story” on Max. On a more personal note, I’ll also fondly remember another one of Sabathia’s rehabs. During the summer of 2014, when I started working for The Trentonian as an intern, my first big assignment was to cover Sabathia’s stint with the Trenton Thunder, who had been the Yankees’ Double-A affiliate. Since I was writing a sidebar on the event, I focused on Sabathia’s work with highly touted catcher prospect Gary Sanchez. So I asked Sabathia about his impressions of throwing to Sanchez. There was no guarantee that the two would ever be in a game together again. Sanchez still had work to do in the minor leagues, and Sabathia was in the twilight of his career. Major leaguers can sometimes be terse, too, when the last thing they’re concerned about while on rehab is talking to the media. Sabathia nonetheless gave a nice answer about working with Sanchez during spring training and their communication between innings that night. It may have only resulted in one measly quote in a story, but it meant a lot to a young reporter trying to not screw up in the world of sports journalism. Sabathia also represents a nostalgic era of baseball to me. He was the runner-up for AL Rookie of the Year (oddly enough, behind Ichiro Suzuki, one of two other new Hall of Famers along with Billy Wagner) in 2001, which was the year that I began religiously following the league every day in the newspaper and on television. Sabathia made an immediate impact in Cleveland during what were the later years of baseball’s Steroid Era, developed into a bonafide ace with the Indians and briefly the Brewers, and then called the Bronx home for 11 years with the Yankees, where he became a champion and ended his career as a six-time All-Star with 251 wins. And now, the fighter from Vallejo, California is set to be immortalized in Cooperstown on July 27. Congrats, CC. You deserve it.