Chamberlain at home in Yankee Stadium
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BY VIC ZIEGEL / New York Daily News
NEW YORK — If all goes well, if the front office had it right, if hitters keep swinging and missing, Joba Chamberlain’s first home game in front of the usual 54,398, every customer will one day be able to tell their grandkids they were there, yep, right there, sitting behind Mickey Mantle, when the great Joba threw his first inning at Yankee Stadium, the old place.
And if Joba keeps delivering the promise of the small taste we’ve had so far, everybody who ever read a box score, or rode past 161st Street on the subway, will boast about having been in the Bronx his opening night.
The Yankees, you must have noticed, have been winning. Nine of their last 10, after beating Baltimore, 7-6. Now it’s 12 of 14, 18 of 23. They’re 24-8 since the All-Star break, when they were still stuck in neutral. But look at them now.
The bats were working, as usual, and when they needed a run in the ninth they got a run in the ninth. And after one inning here, Joba is the crowd’s new favorite.
“He’s been fun to watch, but let’s not get too excited,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said before the game, before getting just a little excited. “But his stuff’s pretty damn special. And he seems to command it.”
Location, location, location, the manager means. And once in a while he throws a pitch that makes Torre, watching from the dugout, tell himself, “Wow, that’s interesting.”
The manager says it’s too soon to be “patting ourselves on the back.” That’s how managers sound, even when their team is closing in on a playoff spot. Cautious, they must be cautious. But you know Torre’s sleeping better, and turning on sports radio stations more often. “We’re doing a lot of good things,” he said after the game.
And maybe better than good is in the room, in the locker next to Roger Clemens. This Joba person — pronounced Jaba, rhymes with lava — has been so impressive, so far, even Torre is willing to pat the 21-year-old righthander on the back.
His fastball zooms into the high 90s, and his slider turns .300 hitters into swinging suckers. He struck out Miguel Tejada, the first batter he faced in the eighth, on a tough slider. Tejada, disgusted, came close to throwing his bat. The count on Kevn Millar, next, was 0-2, when he grounded to third. Aubrey Huff struck out, too, another sweet slider. Can’t hit what you can’t find.
Joba pumped his fist, and yelled something into the night.
“That’s who I am,” he said later. “That’s who you’ll get every time.”
He’s so new, he hasn’t learned the names of the guys holding the bats.
“To be honest with you I didn’t know who I faced,” he said. “I just knew right-right-left.”
The crowd, chanting “Joba, Joba,” was just as excited. Torre’s little joke: “I wonder why.”
The word is getting out about Joba, awfully quickly when you realize this is his first professional season. Unless you count the 37 innings he contributed to the West Oahu (pronounced any way you want) CaneFires in the Hawaiian Winter League. (Oh to be named Joba and pitching in the Hawaiian Winter League.)
He started this season in A-ball, Tampa, 4-0, 51 strikeouts in 40 innings. Two months ago, he was jumped to Trenton, Double-A, 4-2, 64 strikeouts, 39 innings. Scranton/Wilkes Barre, Triple-A, was next, eight innings, 18 strikeouts. After 10 days there, he was moved into pinstripes.
His future is the starting rotation but right now the Yankees are using him out of the bullpen. So far, so terrific — three games, five innings, eight strikeouts, one hit, an ERA of absolutely nothing.
Too bad we have to spend so much time with numbers because his back-story is worth hearing. He said he was 4 years old, living in Lincoln, when he used to sit in front of the TV set and watch ballgames from start to finish.
The first time somebody told him about Yankee Stadium, “I was 5 years old,” he said.
His first visit to the Stadium, he watched his team play the Mets, and his second visit was a few weeks ago when the Yankees brought him into town to pick up his passport for the trip to Toronto. The Yanks were on the road but that didn’t stop him from looking around the Stadium.
The Joba file: Pitched one year for Kearney-Nebraska, Division II, and transferred to Nebraska. He’s the highest-drafted Native American in baseball history, and wherever he went he’d ask people what pitching at Yankee Stadium was like.
“Like having your first kid,” somebody told him.
Sitting in front of his locker before the game, he seemed completely at ease. Another rookie, Shelley Duncan, gives the impression he might run around the room asking for autographs. Joba looks like as if he’s been sitting in that chair for years.
And now the awful truth: His name isn’t Joba. It’s (yawn) Justin. He became Joba when a baby cousin who couldn’t pronounce Justin came up with Joba. It’s been Joba ever since. And now he’s in the process of getting it legally changed. To Joba. What else?
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