Ten years ago, CC Sabathia signing with the New York Yankees would have been just cause for us to rattle the keyboard with feverish indignation.

But we've gone through this before. There is nothing new here. It's just more of the same.

Albert Belle left. Jim Thome left. Manny Ramirez left. Sabathia is just the latest former Cleveland Indians star to accept an offer from a team willing to ridiculously overpay for his services.

Set aside the righteous indignation and the hatred of those crisp, pinstriped uniforms for a moment and picture yourself as Sabathia.

You're 6-foot-8 and somewhere around 300 pounds. You can do things with your left arm only a select few people in the world can do. You've grown up with the Indians. You've experienced the highs, the lows and everything in between during the course of your contract. You've won 117 games and a Cy Young Award in eight seasons and you're still just 28 years old.

You're in the final year of your deal and being a young, hard-throwing left-hander, you know you're sure to be the biggest name on the free-agent market over the winter.

Do you give the Indians a hometown discount when they offer a new contract everyone knows is far below market value? Or do you wait and see what the market will bear? Sabathia did that and the Indians eventually traded him to the Milwaukee Brewers for prospects.

Some Indians fans swear they'd be loyal to Cleveland if they were Sabathia, Belle, Thome or Ramirez. There was a time I felt that way, too.

The thinking is there just isn't that much difference between $160 million and $120 million. Even at $40 million less, it's still more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime.

We'd like to think so, anyway.

But when I put myself in Sabathia's oversized shoes, I'm not sure I would have done anything different than he did. An athlete's shelf life is just so long. If the Yankees are willing to overpay - and make no mistake, they are seriously overpaying for the services of one left-handed starting pitcher - why shouldn't Sabathia sign that contract as fast as he can and immediately take care his entire existing family and those relatives yet to be born?

Indians fans know all too well how quickly a promising career can go tragically wrong. We wrote about the darkest day of Herb Score's career in this very space just recently.

Look what happened to Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, who were supposed to anchor the Chicago Cubs' pitching staff for the next 10 to 15 years.

Prior was 18-6 with 250 strikeouts and a 2.43 ERA as a 22-year-old in 2003. Then a series of arm and shoulder problems ruined his career. He hasn't pitched in the majors since 2006, when he was 1-6 with a 7.21 ERA.

Wood won 13 games as a rookie in 1998. He struck out 233 batters in 166 2/3 innings, including a record-tying 20 in a one-hit shutout of the Houston Astros. But after winning 59 games in his first five seasons and striking out a career-high 266 in 2003, Wood also fell victim to recurring arm injuries. He is now a reliever, and if he passes a physical, could be the Indians closer in 2009.

If he doesn't get hurt again.

So forgive me if I don't wish ill upon Sabathia for accepting the Yankees' offer. That's how it goes in baseball these days. Teams like the Indians cultivate and nurture talent, and teams like the Yankees, Boston Red Sox and New York Mets eventually poach it.

Sabathia took the ball every five days and seemed to give his all during his years in Cleveland. He was more like Thome than Belle - a good citizen who made the most of his abilities and didn't go out of his way to antagonize fans, opponents, teammates or media types. He also wasn't the dimwitted flake Ramirez has shown himself to be over the years.

But just like all of those former Indians, Sabathia eventually played out his contract and went for the money.

That's baseball in the 21st century.

I still love the game. There is no other sport as strategically, aesthetically and athletically gratifying to experience in person. But the romanticized baseball of my youth - when players routinely spent their entire careers in the same towns and sometimes grew to become the faces of teams and cities - is long gone.

But we still have the audio, video and the glorious statistics that are the essence of the game. The Yankees can have Sabathia. But they don't have enough money to take those other things from us.

At least not yet.

epuskas@tribtoday.com