The place that invented the “Bronx cheer” doesn’t cotton to its
baseball players easily. Yankees fans took years to warm up to the
best player in the game, Alex Rodriguez. People still call up Mike
and the Maddog on WFAN 660 to debate whether A-Rod is a “true
Yankee.” Even the long-beloved bombers like Derek Jeter and Mariano
Rivera have recently been diminished in the affection of their
fans.
So how did a rookie who pitched only 24 innings in the major
leagues and whose most famous game featured him giving up a Yankee
lead in a playoff duel with the Indians become a Yankee
instalegend?
That Joba Chamberlain’s career has exploded is not disputed.
Buster Olney, in a cover-story for ESPN the Magazine noted
that before he even made it to the majors, “Chants of ‘Joba’
rattled through Yankee Stadium this season the way ‘Maximus’ flew
around the ring in Gladiator.”
The anticipation for Chamberlain was created by the 24/7
sports-entertainment complex. Die-hard fans often know the names of
their team’s youngest pitching prospects from the moment they are
drafted. Why fall in love with Chamberlain?
FIRST THE NAME: Joba. Fans often repeat it like an insensible pagan
chant: JobaJobaJoba. Chamberlain was born Justin Chamberlain in
1985, in Lincoln, Nebraska. But his niece was unable to pronounce
the name Justin correctly for years, instead calling him “jah-buh.”
Eventually Justin came to prefer the new moniker and had it legally
changed.
Second, there is his biography. Born to a hardscrabble life,
Joba was raised by a single father, Harlan Chamberlain. Harlan was
born on the Winnebago Indian Reservation in the northeastern
section of Nebraska. He contracted polio as a child and left his
community for the children’s hospital in Lincoln where he stayed
for over six years. He eventually had a son and a divorce and
supported Joba by working 70 hours a week — 40 as a manager at the
state penitentiary, 30 as a bouncer at a nightclub.
That working class do-what-ya-gotta attitude was imparted to his
son. After Joba graduated high school, he stayed home and worked
for the city to help make ends meet for his father. He maintained
ball-fields and cleaned bathrooms before entering the University of
Nebraska-Kearney. Chamberlain even looks like a
working-class-heartlander standing at just over 6’1” and weighing
a meaty 230 lbs.
Third, his talent. Somehow Chamberlain summons his gigantic
frame forward from the mound and pushes the ball over 100 mph. His
slider has a “biting” downward motion that turns major-league at
bats into a laugh-reel for SportsCenter. He struck out the first
major-league batter he faced last August and dominated in his
appearances since then. His ERA over his short career is just 0.38
and he collected nearly three dozen strikeouts in two dozen
innings.
After his second major-league start, T-shirts with his name and
number on them could be spotted at the Jersey Shore, or in Cold
Spring, New York. In the Bronx, they were so ubiquitous one
imagined that Joba’s Army was a revolutionary movement ready to
sweep away New York itself.
MOST IMPORTANT to fans was Chamberlain’s “heart.” Unlike so many of
the Yankees who approached the game with
starched-uniform-professionalism, Chamberlain let his joy in his
success show. An inning-ending strikeout called forth a scream of
elation and fist-pump that sent the jaded Bronx crowd into
hysterical elation. Finally, Yankees fans had a home-grown talent
they hadn’t traded for an over-priced veteran! Bronx baseball was
fun again.
Even Chamberlain’s memorable, but disastrous playoff performance
in the Yankees’ 2007 playoff series against the Indians added to
his stature. Sent in to protect a 1-0 lead, Chamberlain and the
entirety of Jacobs Field were swarmed with bugs. The cloud of
insects was so thick that visibility diminished as they filled the
sky like a rainstorm. Umpires and position players vainly swatted
in front of their faces. Bugs got into Chamberlain’s glove, his
grip on the baseball and his eye. He pitched with heart, but two
wild throws allowed a run to score. Some speculate that manager Joe
Torre’s reluctance to have the game delayed until the swarm
dispersed cost the Yankees the win, and Torre his job in New
York.
The young pitcher shrugged it off. “Bugs are bugs,” Chamberlain
told reporters after the game. “It’s something you’ve got to deal
with.” The performance nevertheless inspired one of the several
dozen Facebook groups dedicated to Chamberlain: “Joba’s so good,
Cleveland had to release a PLAGUE to take him down!”
As spring training continues, 1050 ESPN radio and all New York
talk stations are still buzzing for one player: the big kid who
became King of New York in just 24 innings.
