Sabathia Helps Remind The World About Sandy

It’s not over yet.

Sure, Sandy’s waves aren’t beating down the New Jersey shoreline currently, and the flood waters have mostly receded, but super-storm Sandy’s impact is still being felt. My friends in Jersey City — who live a block from an evacuation zone — just got power back. Today. Cable, and normalcy, to follow. There’s still a shortage of hospitals in lower Manhattan. Long Island is not fully powered. Hoboken still has muck to clear. Families still mourn their lost ones and their losses.

It’s the sort of thing that happens with storms. Hurricane Katrina’s impact is still felt today, and you might not know it if you don’t watch the decent HBO series about the city of New Orleans post-storm. Haiti — never really normal — isn’t what it was before that devastating earthquake, but outside of a few Caribbean-American populations, you’re not confronted with the needs of that island any more. We only have enough attention span for the next big storm, and there’s always one coming.

Because CC Sabathia now makes a living in New York city and lives in New Jersey, he wasn’t about to forget the impact of Sandy, but he also remembered how important the Boys and Girls Clubs were to him as he was growing up. As a second grader in California, he played basketball daily at the Boys and Girls club in Vallejo. “It was my first organized sport,” the lefty ace said.

So, even as power came back on around the tri-state, Sabathia spent Saturday afternoon painting and revamping the damaged Boys and Girls club in Hoboken. Well, that was after he started the day in Central Park setting off the CC Challenge, a sponsored ‘Amazing Race’ style competition that raised funds for his non-profit, Pitch CC. That’s a full day of helping people.

“I did what I could,” said Sabathia. And he’s right, because both events helped raise awareness and cash to help the region recover from that terrible storm. “It seemed like a great way to spend the day,” he added. Which is a lesson to those who, like me, want to help and are struggling to find a way to do anything from afar. Spending the day, or a few dollars, or even some attention span as the world turns to the next salacious disaster, all of that is important.

Even when you’ve just had surgery on a nine-figure arm. “Oh I’ll be painting with my right arm today,” Sabathia laughed, making sure to add that he’ll be fully healthy soon.