Joba Chamberlain

Well, I picked a good game to be my first at the new Yankee Stadium. I took my little brothers and sister to the game today, and boy was it a treat. The stadium is beautiful and the game was just  epic. Melky walking off in the 14th was unbelievably thrilling. Tomorrow morning I'm going to do a bit of a write up on my experience at the stadium and the game in particular. But now, I have a story to tell you. And it's all about the 6pound8ouncebaby himself. For the record, the pictures are of my brothers, and they are both very important to the story.

Ok, so we arrived at the stadium at 11 O'Clock. We were all so excited to be there, and we initially just wandering around the Great Hall. Scoping it out and what not. Some guy who worked at the stadium quickly told us that batting practice was going on and that we should get out to the field. We hustled down to the field and of course were denied entry onto the field level. My frustration with security was definitely rising at this point, so we left and went up to the mezzanine level. After a little begging, the mezzanine security guard let us down to the edge of the section about the RF field seats. We noticed Joba shagging flies for BP. We quickly started to call for him to throw us balls. I ended up catching 2 balls on this "upper" level. 1 from Joba, that I kept, and one from a mystery Yankee (I forgot my glasses) which I gave to my brother. After BP, Joba ran to the RF foul line and started to sign autographs. We decided that we would try everything we could to get down to the field level. We ran down and begged the security guard to let us down, and he was very nice about it and allowed us to go. We moved down to the end of the line and my little brother (top picture), sat up on the wall and passed all of our stuff to Joba to sign. We ended up getting 2 balls, 2 hats, and 1 ticket signed in total. My little brother then asks Joba for a fist pump, and screams "JOBA CHAMBERLAIN TALKED TO ME". Joba loved this and started to take an interest into him. Sean (little brother #1) asked for a picture, and started to take a picture with his phone. I used my phone to help him out, but he wasn't paying attention to the fact that I was trying to take the picture. Joba tried to tell him, but he was too excited at the fact that he was sitting next to the 6pounder. Joba ended up swatting him on the head to get his attention. Sean absolutely loved it. Finn (brother #2) also wanted a picture, and Joba picked him up to get him up on the wall, which Finn just loved. Finn went on to ask Joba for a handshake, that lasted for about 20 seconds. Joba even said "I'm not letting go dude". Finn complemented him after on the "firmness of his handshake" and Joba cracked up. My little sister also played a role. She was making jokes to Joba and he was just loving it. 

The best part about all of this was how thrilled he made my little siblings and I. We could not stop talking about it for the rest of the 7 HOURS we spent at the stadium. It's great to see that these people can have such a great impact on fans. 

It was so funny to have my family give Joba a good laugh. We were "hanging out" with him for a solid 20 minutes. He seems like a really nice guy and got a huge kick out of my little siblings. He is totally worthy of having this blog named after him.

I'll post tomorrow about my experiences today. It was so fantastic.