CC Sabathia snubs the Guardians with Baseball Hall of Fame cap selection

CC Sabathia made some richly deserved history on Tuesday night, earning induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his very first year on the ballot. And it's not hard to see why: The big lefty was one of the very best pitchers in the world at his peak — he finished top-five in Cy Young voting five times in five years from 2007-2011 — and demanded the ball and delivered in the biggest moments.

Now that we know Sabathia is bound for Cooperstown, though, there's another matter to attend to: Which team's cap should he be wearing when his plaque is unveiled this summer? For the uninitiated, every inductee is given a physical plaque in the Hall, featuring a bust of that player wearing the hat of the team he's most associated with. Just who gets to make that determination is a matter of occasional controversy; while the player's input is considered, it's the Hall that makes the final call, and sometimes the two parties don't exactly see eye to eye.

Which brings us back to Sabathia. The six-time All-Star split his career almost evenly between the New York Yankees and Cleveland Guardians, but he's already made his feelings very clear about which team he wants to be representing in Cooperstown — and Cleveland won't be too happy about it.

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Should CC Sabathia go into the Baseball Hall of Fame with New York or Cleveland?

We haven't gotten the Hall's official determination yet, but if it were up to Sabathia, he would "absolutely" be enshrined in a Yankees cap, as he told the New York Daily News last month.

The answer maybe shouldn't be so clean-cut, however. Sure, Sabathia spent 11 seasons in New York to eight with Cleveland, and it was with the Yankees that he earned his World Series ring. But Sabathia spent his first seven-plus seasons in the Majors with Cleveland, the team that drafted him in the first round back in 1998. He won his only Cy Young with the organization, and threw more complete games with a better ERA+ (115 vs. 112) and a better WHIP (1.265 vs. 1.272).

The most impressive stretch of his entire career may not have come with either team: After being acquired by the Milwaukee Brewers at the 2008 trade deadline, Sabathia put his new club on his back, posting a 1.65 ERA with seven complete games and three shutouts in 17 starts to will Milwaukee to the postseason. An argument could be made for a blank cap, reserved for players whose accomplishments were equally distributed across two or more teams.

In the end, though, of course Sabathia was going to choose the Yankees, just like he did in free agency after the '08 season. He may have been just as good of a pitcher in Cleveland as he was in New York, but New York turned him into a whole different kind of celebrity, making him far more of a household name than he ever was previously. It makes perfect sense that the Yankees would be the franchise he feels more of a connection to at this point, given how much the team and its fans have embraced him after his retirement. Don't hold it against Cleveland fans if they're a little sore at being forgotten, though.