Joba on the Mound

By: Dalton Walker

The Winnebago with the brilliant right arm was in sports headlines across the nation recently for two entirely different reasons.

The first, a more humanized Joba Chamberlain surfaced as the 22-year-old relief pitcher for the New York Yankees left the team to be with his ill father back home in Lincoln, Neb.
Chamberlain missed a few Yankee outings and when he returned he released a statement to the media explaining his father's condition.

"After several difficult days, my father is feeling much better," Chamberlain said in the statement released by the club. "Each day he's acting more and more like himself, and he's even giving people grief — myself included — because the hospital doesn't carry Yankees games on television."

His father, Harlan Chamberlain, is a wonderful man and a great role model for many Native children. The elder Chamberlain has a history of health issues including a childhood case of polio that left him partially paralyzed. He relies on a motorized scooter for transportation. The father and son are very close. Joba has told numerous media outlets that he speaks to his father on the phone at least once a day.

The second set of headlines had to deal with an on-field issue brought up by the often outspoken Steinbrenner family, which owns the Yankees. With the team off to a slow start, at least by New York standards, Yankees co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner blasted the team, saying Joba should start.

"I want him as a starter and so does everyone else, including him, and that is what we are working toward and we need him there now," Steinbrenner told The New York Times. "There is no question about it, you don't have a guy with a 100-mile-per-hour fastball and keep him as a setup guy. You just don't do that. You have to be an idiot to do that."

The rest of the story is here: http://www.reznetnews.org/article/feature-article/joba-mound