Yankees assign Mark Teixeira to wake up CC Sabathia from hibernation

NEW YORK — With spring training just around the corner, the New York Yankees are beginning their final preparations for the season. This year, that includes the daunting task of waking up pitcher CC Sabathia from his three-month hibernation.

“Yeah, someone’s gotta go up there and rustle CC,” said manager Joe Girardi. “Not fun.”

In late October, Sabathia consumed approximately 200,000 calories woth of food, which is four times his normal daily intake. Then, he went to the Catskill mountains in upstate New York, where he found a suitable cave for his three-month slumber. He stripped naked, curled into a fetal position, and went into a trance-like sleep that would allow him to wake up refreshed and ready for the season, and have the added benefit of allowing him to survive the cold winter, where food is scarce and harder to come by. This is the first year that the Yankees have had to wake up Sabathia from his annual hibernation.

“It’s not fun, from what I understand,” said Derek Jeter, who heard about the challenge from Sabathia’s former Cleveland Indians teammate Grady Sizemore. “Wait, unless, do you like waking up a raging 300-lb ginormous mammal? No? Okay, then, yeah, it’s not fun.”

Sizemore described the challenge for SSNN.

“You know what it’s like when you wake up a little kid for school, and they don’t want to get up, and they swipe at you?” Sizemore said. “Well, it’s a bit like that. But it’s also sort of like waking up a grumpy old man who is asleep on the couch watching golf. And there’s an element of trying to get your wife to come to the bedroom when she’s fallen asleep in the living room late at night, you know, when she gets all surly and says mean stuff to you. And, finally, there’s a whole part of it that’s like taking a bone away from a giant dog. Basically, the whole endeavor is frought with peril, and you have to be really careful.”

The Yankees met as a team about the issue, and they have decided that newly acquired first baseman Mark Teixeira will have to be the one who goes and wakes up Sabathia.

“We picked Mark because he’s new,” said Alex Rodriguez. “He’s kind of a country boy, so we figured, if we’re going to put someone in the cave with the beast, it might as well be him.”

Teixeira was confused by the challenge, mistakenly believing that he’ll also have to be naked when he goes to wake up Sabathia.

“I’m fine with waking the dude up,” Teixeira said. “I’ve got a whole plan that includes making loud noises first, and then if that doesn’t work, I’m going to poke him with a long tree branch. I just don’t understand why they want me to be naked, but, hey, it’s the Yankees, so am I going to argue?”

Jeter indicated that the team met separately to determine whether they should tell Teixeira that he doesn’t indeed need to be naked when he wakes up Sabathia, and they decided not to.

“Most of us think it’ll be hilarious, naked Teixeira poking big-assed CC with a stick,” Jeter said. “A.J. Burnett was really the only dude who didn’t think we should send Teixeira up there naked. But screw him, he’s new also. So we decided he has to go up there and record it so we can put it on YouTube. Brilliant, right?”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!