Just Briefly

Jobamania

Joba Chamberlain makes his first start for the Yankees today. Yes, it's been a long 24months since he got drafted (not), but he's finally getting to do what he was drafted for. The anticipation is apparently seismic.
Here's a funny one you should read.

Major World Event: Christopher Columbus discovers America, 1492

Why This is Bigger: First of all, Columbus didn't discover squat. He didn't even know where he was. He was lost. He thought he had landed on India. Plus, you can't "discover" something that's already inhabited. And the continent Columbus bumped into was already inhabited by Native Americans. Oh, and by the way, guess who is half Native American? You got it. (His other half? Awesome.)

You get the gist. Go Joba!

UPDATE: It was nowhere near a spectacular start as one would want. It took him 62 pitches to get 7 outs p the first took 38 pitches to get through.

“I expected more of myself,” Chamberlain said. “As much as you guys put it on me, as much as anyone else, it’s little compared to what I put on myself.”

Maybe so, though Chamberlain has to understand, he was the Yankees’ fine wine, the one they knew needed time to mature and yet still carried the temptation of opening early anyway. And finally, they were ready to twist out the cork, and when they did, damn if it didn’t smell a little musty.

Which made the end of Chamberlain’s start so … anticlimactic. At the 62-pitch mark, Girardi marched out to the mound and asked for the ball. Chamberlain had just issued a four-pitch walk. He didn’t want to leave that way. No one did. Chamberlain had no room to argue, though, so he slogged off the mound, acknowledged a far-less-robust ovation with an equally faint tip of his cap, entered the dugout, threw his glove, removed his hat and sat there, catatonic.

“Joba expects to be perfect every time,” Girardi said. “And that’s what you want from a competitor. You don’t expect to give up runs. And you expect to make your pitches all the time.”

Chamberlain missed more than he made, the first inning a 38-pitch special that exceeded his previous high inning in the big leagues by 14 pitches. Chamberlain’s fourth hit 101 mph on the generous Yankee Stadium radar gun. His final one in the inning clocked in at 99. In between, there were three walks, a balk, a single and plenty of teeth-gnashing.

It was a... IPK-Hughes-2008-like outing by the bumbers. Of course he hit 101mph on his fastball, but if you can't get them out, you can't get them out. The game started with a walk, a balk, a wild pitch pass-ball sending the lead-off guy to third, and a ground out scoring the first run. It was so excruciating I had to walk off to work. By the time I got there, he was off the mound. It certainly wasn't auspicious.