New York Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia confirmed a TMZ report that he was involved in a street fight leaving a Toronto nightclub early on Saturday morning.
In a video published by TMZ, Sabathia was seen yelling and pointing before the brawl ensued.
“Bad decision on my part,” Sabathia said Monday, per the New York Post, at Yankee Stadium. “I probably should have just kept quiet and got in the cab. I’m just glad I got in the cab before everything went down. But I didn’t know anything that was happening. I didn’t know that big fight and everything happened after.”
The 35-year-old said he couldn’t remember exactly what prompted the melee, but admitted that someone got “personal” about his playing ability.
“I just flipped out,” he told the New York paper. “It happens. You don’t hide. I go to dinner. I do different things. Sometimes … it was a bad night. They caught me at a bad time. Got a bad reaction. I was just leaving. It was literally 25 seconds of me and then I was gone.”
Sabathia regrets his involvement and now has to explain his actions to his children.
“It’s tough because I have a 12-year-old now and he has a cell phone and he’ll see this and I got to explain this to him,” Sabathia said. “That’s the toughest part: ‘Dad had a bad night. Made a bad decision. Sometimes these things happen.’”
The Yankees pitcher is 4-9 with a 5.23 ERA and 107 strikeouts in 129 innings this season. He did not pitch during the team’s recent series in Toronto and is scheduled to make his next start Tuesday against the Minnesota Twins.
