Cleveland alums Lee, Sabathia ready to clash in World Series

NEW YORK -- Care packages rarely arrive this highly anticipated. Homemade cookies and a new T-shirt inside the box, sure. CD mixes and books, OK.

But two ace pitchers opposing each other in Game 1?

They have been on an October collision course now for the past few weeks, and when the World Series fires up on what is predicted to be a wet and chilly Wednesday night, the matchup that so many baseball fans cannot get enough of will be on.

The Yankees and the Phillies.

And, um, Cleveland and infamy.

It will be electric. Best team in the American League this year, best team in the National League, and the two most recent AL Cy Young winners.

And when the Yankees' CC Sabathia and the Phillies' Cliff Lee square off, it will be the baseball equivalent of the Cuyahoga River catching fire for Cleveland.

"I don't think this will have that long-lasting of an effect," says Bob DiBiasio, vice-president for public relations for the Indians. "I don't think people are going to be bringing this up 50 years from now.

"But it's a slap in the face to the reality of baseball and baseball economics. People in town understand, we offered CC a hell of a deal [reportedly $72 million over four years in the spring of 2008] and we still were [$89 million] shy.

"Cliff Lee was a little harder to take for our fans because he had another whole year left."

Fresh off his Cy Young award in 2007, the Indians traded Sabathia to Milwaukee in July 2008, because of his impending free agency. After pitching the Brewers to their first playoff appearance since 1982, the big left-hander signed a record-setting, seven-year, $161 million deal with the Yanks last winter.

Fresh off his Cy in '08, the Indians dealt Lee to Philadelphia this July in a pre-emptive move before his contract expired after the 2010 season. Emulating his buddy and former teammate's NL experience from a year ago, Lee went 7-4 with a 3.39 ERA for the Phillies down the stretch.

Each has been incredible in the October spotlight this fall. Sabathia is 3-0 with a 1.19 ERA in three playoff starts, Lee is 2-0 with an 0.74 ERA in three playoff starts.

"I'm really excited," says Carl Willis, instrumental in the development of both Sabathia and Lee during his seven seasons as Cleveland's pitching coach before he was fired in a staff housecleaning earlier this month. "I've watched all of their postseason games and the one thing I was really hoping for was that they'd match up."

Little more than six months after they faced each other in the inaugural regular-season game in the new Yankee Stadium -- Lee was pitching for the Indians back in April -- here they go again.

"We've been texting back and forth pretty much all year, so we keep in contact a lot," Sabathia says, adding that following their duel back in April, Lee "came over to the house. My wife cooked, and he came over and hung out. That's just how we are. We've always been pretty close."

"Big pot of spaghetti," Lee says. "We tore it up pretty good."

They met back in 2002. Sabathia, Cleveland's first-round pick in the 1998 draft, was in his second full season in the bigs. Lee joined the Indians during the summer of '02, coming over along with Grady Sizemore in a trade from Montreal for Bartolo Colon.

"I think we were in Minnesota, maybe, he had just been called up in September, and he went out and dealt," says Sabathia, 29. "He was the Cliff that he is now."

"When I first got to the big leagues, he had been there for a couple of years and he was more of a veteran than I was," says Lee, 32. "But I was older than him, so it was kind of a weird relationship."

"They're both great people," says Phillies reliever Chad Durbin, a teammate of Lee and Sabathia's in Cleveland in 2003 and 2004. "Cliff has been a hell of a pickup for us. And CC has done everything he could possibly do for them.

"It's going to be fun to watch."

Without Lee, the Phillies do not repeat this season as NL champions.

Without Sabathia ... well, do you think the Yankees would have skated this deeply into October with the inconsistent and wacky A.J. Burnett atop the rotation?

"I'm sure everybody in Cleveland will be gritting their teeth," Durbin says. "It will be a little painful for them to watch."

CC Sabathia gets a visit from Carl Willis, who coached Sabathia and Cliff Lee while they were in Cleveland. (Getty Images)

"It's bittersweet," Indians general manager Mark Shapiro told reporters in Cleveland. "You don't work in this game without building a personal attachment to guys. So I look out there and see those two guys and, as people, I'm excited for them. I'm excited for them to show their talent on that stage. I'm excited for them to get that type of exposure.

"And yet, I'm bitter that they're not doing it in the Indians' uniform."

They nearly did. Two autumns ago, the Indians moved to within one victory of reaching the World Series in their AL Championship Series against the Red Sox. But they fell apart for a variety of reasons, one of which was, Sabathia (0-2, 10.45 ERA in that series) was too immature to handle the big stage.

"With CC, it all centers around his emotions," Willis says. "He cares so much. He wants to do well so badly. The emotion and the desire used to get in the way, and then he'd overthrow and his delivery would break down."

Lee was not even on the Indians' roster for that '07 ALCS because he injured his side during spring training, missed a significant amount of time and then never could find his groove when he returned.

"With Cliff, truthfully, his key was repeating his delivery," Willis says. "It's amazing. I watched him all last year [when Lee went 22-3 with a 2.54 ERA to win the Cy Young Award] and I thought, 'No way can he do that again.' But he is. Every pitch is a repeat of the delivery from his previous pitch. His command ... he's come so far."

Lee is not overpowering, working mostly in the 89 to 93 mph range, but he pitches to both sides of the plate and, when he's on, his cut fastball bores in to right-handed hitters at about 87-88 mph.

Against a hard-swinging Yankees lineup that includes powerful right-handers like Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, who excel at extending their arms and slamming home runs to right field and right-center, it is imperative for Lee to get his cut fastball working.

Sabathia can be overpowering. Though his fastball averages between 93 and 95 mph, hitters know he can reach back for the extra cheese when he needs to.

"Everyone talks about CC's changeup, but I think the most important thing for him, and it is for Cliff as well, is spotting his pitches," Willis says. "Changing zones, going down and away from right-handers, in, out, up, down."

During days that came so close to touching glory in Cleveland, they learned from each other.

"I got to see him develop from a young pitcher that would borderline get mad and throw the ball as hard as he can, to a guy that nothing fazed him and he was totally in control of the game," Lee says. "I don't know if I had anything to do with that, but I think just watching him evolve into what he is now, I'd like to think that I had something to do with it."

And having been dealt about a year ahead of Lee, Sabathia offered a few words of wisdom from afar when Lee was shipped away this summer.

"I just told him to swing hard when he's hitting," Sabathia says, smiling.

Neither Lee nor Sabathia must worry about swinging as what has all the makings of a classic World Series opens in an AL park with the designated hitter at the ready and Cleveland in the shadows.

"I'll tell you, the one thing I'll be thinking about the most, and it will bring back a level of frustration, is that you look at those two and you wish they could have stayed consistent and healthy here, and how that could have changed our fortunes in this period of time," DiBiasio says. "Those two, Kevin Millwood, Jake Westbrook, even Fausto Carmona ... they never clicked at the same time.

"If they did, we could have won probably two World Series. And it would have changed our economics moving forward."

Barely a week after trading Lee over the summer, on Aug. 7, the Indians commissioned a study that found that between 2005 and 2009, the Yankees had spent more than $1 billion on players -- $1,071,941,910, to be exact. It turned out to be roughly $740 million more than the Indians had spent.

"We were trying to explain to people around here, it's just two different worlds in our sport," DiBiasio says.

Sabathia and Lee now belonging to that other world, the Indians, along with 27 other teams, will settle back and watch, their fingerprints heavy on this World Series, their care package carefully delivered and greedily opened.

In front of the television in his North Carolina home, Willis says he'll be pulling for each man to pitch nine innings, strike each other out once, collect one hit off each other and complete nine innings with the score 0-0.

In front of their televisions in Cleveland, perhaps DiBiasio shouldn't be so sure that folks won't be bringing this one up 50 years from now. After all, the Indians last won a World Series in 1948. If the current run of misfortune continues, if this Lee-Sabathia matchup is as close as Cleveland gets to a World Series title for the next 50 years. ...

"But they'll be 70 years old," DiBiasio protests, chuckling. "And they'll be forgetting."