Joba Chamberlain

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All of us had a father, But how can you
tell which of us had a dad? Maybe by the
way they missed them. We don't miss our fathers nearly
as much as we miss our dads. Well, there is
a forty two year old little boy in Lincoln who
really needs his Saturday night. Lincoln police arrested that forty
two year old dui be his second one, no registration,

(00:22):
no proof of insurance, and a judge was chasing him
for past due child support. Justin Chamberlain, now you know
him by his nickname one that twenty years ago this
summer had fifty four thousand New Yorkers jamming Yankee Stadium,
crying it as one Jaba, two syllables that for a

(00:44):
few moments appeared destined to be the opening lines of
a wonderful story, the Macons of a Frank Capra movie.
Jaba Chamberlain July twenty five, two thousand and eight, Fenway Park, Boston.
Jaba outduels all Star Josh Beckett, throwing seven score innings,
three hits, one walk, nine strikeouts. A star was confirmed

(01:05):
in seven. It was born in getting called up to
the majors, Chamberlain jumped four minor league levels in one
summer with an eighteen to one strikeouts to walks ratio.
As a Yankee, he caz twenty in his first sixteen
innings fastball hits one hundred on the gun, followed by
the best slider in the Solar System finishes seven to

(01:27):
two to Ozho with a zero point three point eight
earned run average. Solid in eight thirty two starts in nine,
won a World Series, and then the injuries elbow and
eleven ankle in twelve never the same. The Yankees cut
him forty five games into twenty thirteen through sixteen, bounced
between the majors and the miners, all ending in spring

(01:49):
training twenty seventeen. For the next eight years as Jabas
struggled to find a place something in baseball, maybe a
bar or a restaurant. They all failed, but at least
there was Dad until he died in twenty twenty five. Now,
don't misunderstand we all lose loved ones. Those losses shouldn't

(02:09):
excuse Jaba's bad choices. He must account for them. But
know this, what Harlan Chamberlain meant to Jaba is to
imagine the most selfless, loving, intimate relationship between a father
and a son. Between any parent and child, it started
when the kid was one. A divorce abject poverty usually
leads to it. Jaba's mother left Harlan stricken with polio

(02:33):
at nine when it swept across the Winnebago Indian Reservation,
losing his entire left side. Raised Jaba and his sister
in a tiny, hard scrabble house in Lincoln's Least neighborhood
while working for minimum wage at the State Penitentiary until
Jaba left for college. Father and son shared the same bed.

(02:57):
By age four, Jaba was Harlan's arms in life. Legs
the daily laundry in the basement, a handed meal time,
and then before bed each night, pulled off Harlan's boots, socks,
and pants, then massaged the cream basin and saline to
treat the ulcers on Dad's bad leg. Harlan gives it back.
Doesn't miss a moment of this childhood because he never

(03:18):
had one. Picks the kids up from school even though
they live across the street. Is the Little League team
Dad prom Night Chaperone, Pa Guy Program Hawker there for
everything that's a Dad lays the love on thick. Harlan
shares his love of baseball teaches Jaba to throw and
catch with a good hand, pulls the glove off, to

(03:39):
throw it back every day of the year, snow so
show the sun what he missed. Love, family, just one
person who cared. Harlan shared every humiliating struggle of his
tortured life, not to sew guilt in Jaba, but to
remind the son of what he has never stopped, reminding
Jaba that he could do it had talent. Just be patient, prepared,

(04:02):
be ready. Don't need year round instruction or a spot
on a select travel team. Love baseball enough to do anything.
Chalk the field, clean, the public toilets, humility, hunger, perspective,
that's your edge. That edge and Harlan's love took him
all the way to Yankee Stadium, World Series rings and
briefly wealth and security. They laughed, they sang, they double dated,

(04:25):
they cried together. Without him, it seems Jaba has entered
a very bad place. The chamberlains remind me of the
lyrics from the Luther Vandross song Dance with My Father.
It goes like this, if I could get another chance,
another walk, another dance with him, I'd play a song
that would never ever end,