Lincoln, NE's new favorite son

We got to see this kid pitch at The Stadium Friday night. He electrified the place. And his story is pretty amazing, too.

Two fields stood across the street from Joba Chamberlain's house in Lincoln, Neb., one grass, one gravel, and on summer evenings, kids from across the whole neighborhood in the northeast part of town would gather outside to play baseball. The Chamberlains kept enough gloves and bats for everyone and Joba's father, Harlan, would umpire games from his wheelchair, offering coaching tips between calls.

When there wasn't a game, Chamberlain and his father still played catch in the yard, even during the winter. "If it wasn't blowin' or a million degrees below zero, we were out there," Harlan Chamberlain says.

The aluminum siding on the house had hundreds of dents. The father would urge the boy to dive for grounders. The boy would get dirty. The father never yelled.

Harlan couldn't use his left hand, so he would catch the ball with his right, take off the worn Wilson glove he'd bought back in 1972, and throw the ball back to his son. The boy threw his hardest until he was 8 years old. That's when the father said his hand couldn't take the sting anymore.

"It was always all about baseball," Joba Chamberlain says now, smiling. Both men say those memories are among the fondest of their lives.

Now the boy plays at Yankee Stadium, the thunderous roar of fans who have taken to him like a son of Nebraska takes to Cornhusker red pounding in his ears. A blistering, 99-mile-per-hour fastball and a biting breaking pitch have made him a cult hero in the Bronx. The 55-year-old father, back in Lincoln, watches the games on a computer, his nurse nearby, a Yankee cap on his head, his heart swelling.

Read, as they say about far less consequential and moving stories, the whole thing.

And now Joba's just been brought in to pitch the seventh in a game Wang and the Yankees are leading the Tigers, 4-3. 55,000 in the stands. The Yankees need this game to win the four game series.

Throws a breaking strike to Sheffield who then pops up a 99mph fastball.

0-2 count on league-leading Ordonez. Strikes him out swinging on a slider.

0-2 count Guillen. 97mph fastball, slider, then strikes him out on another slider.

He is pretty good, Harlan, but you knew that.

UPDATE: Yankees score two more in the bottom of the seventh, with big two-out hits by Bettamit and Phillips. Then a Scranton call-up, Edwar Ramirez (go ahead, I dare, you, click on it), comes in and strikes out the side, contrasting his 75mph breaking pitches with Joba's high-90s fastball. Great fun.

UPDATE #2: The Yankees blow it open in the bottom of the eigth. Edwar Ramirez pitches a 1-2-3 ninth and the Yankees win 9-3. Afterwards, Suzyn Waldman reports that in the clubhouse Ramirez walked up to Chamberlain, threw his arms around him, and said, "I'm never going back to the minor leagues."