TAMPA – The lasting image of Joba Chamberlain, the one we took with us into the winter, was of a sweaty mess covered in bugs – midges, to be precise. Even now, to look at video of that muggy Friday night in Cleveland, and to see Chamberlain, is to squirm all over again.
Bad enough to get attacked like that at a summertime picnic. But with major-league hitters standing in front of you? With a baseball season hanging in the balance?
“One thing’s for sure,” Chamberlain said earlier this week, “it’s something I’ll never forget. Or anyone else who watched that.”
There is so much mythology surrounding Chamberlain already, and that only kicked into a higher stratosphere: no man could fell him.
It took a swarm.
Yesterday, it was Chamberlain who would throw the first 22 pitches of the exhibition season for the Yankees, a tasty sampler for fans who’ve spent much of the past 4½ months recovering from what happened that October night by Lake Erie. They were a damned impressive 22 pitches, truth be told, 15 of them thrown for strikes, all of them mystifying the overmatched South Florida Bulls.
Of course, there’s not any shame in Big East baseball players mostly doing what American League players did all across the latter stages of last summer: flailing away at Chamberlain’s best offerings. Swinging and missing at high heat and diving splits and looking, all the while, as if pitcher and hitter are playing an entirely different game.
For all the famous names that populate the Yankee clubhouse, Chamberlain’s has quickly emerged as the one with the most buzz. Throughout Legends Field yesterday, you could see just as many pinstriped 62s as you could 2s or 13s. Not too shabby if you bother to remember that as of this moment, this is a player with exactly 24 innings – and exactly 55 days of service time – under his belt.
“It was just good to be pitching again, and they were pretty aggressive, not intimidated, which is a good thing,” he said. “It’s one thing to be throwing live batting practice, but pitching in a game situation is more important to me right now.”
The importance of Chamberlain himself has never been an issue, and won’t be. There was a telling moment in the clubhouse, just after Kei Igawa – representative of the old Yankees way of doing business – walked off the mound, having surrendered a grand slam homer for the Bulls’ first four runs.
Ashen faced, sullen, he tried to disappear from the clubhouse. Chamberlain, having heard the news, offered a fist. Igawa bumped it. Old Yankees business and new. A stale way of doing things, and a fresh way.
“I think we’re all excited about what we can do here,” Chamberlain said, referring specifically to the three gems of the Yankees pitching crown who all were on display yesterday. “We can push each other. We all have expectations.”
None larger than the one belonging to Chamberlain, already a folk hero at 22, not so far removed from the college kids he toyed with yesterday. Or the pros he toyed with all last year.