Friday, April 3, 2009

Joba Prepares for Opening Day Using the Babe Ruth Method

Our old pal Joba Chamberlain, he of the boyish grin and high 90s fastball, finally bit the bullet and pled guilty to a DUI charge incurred last October in Lincoln, Nebraska. I decided to do a little research and see if there was any coverage at the time, and oh boy, I hit on a gem. Turns out, he was driving away in anger because someone taunted him about the Yankee season...in a strip club. How the hell did I miss this? Fox Sports had a particularly amazing article about the incident. You can tell from the opening line that it's going to be a doozy:

Taunts about his team's lousy season prompted Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain to storm out of a Nebraska strip joint just before he was busted for alleged drunken driving, associates said yesterday.

The whole article really has to be read to be believed, but it reaches a moment of unreal hilarity with this quote from the devilish instigator:

"Too bad you didn't play for the Red Sox," the customer said, according to another patron at the club. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be sitting here in a strip club in Nebraska."

Brilliant! What starts off as a lame insult ends up as hilarious self-deprecation. "Too bad you didn't make millions for a different professional baseball team...then you wouldn't have to suffer the company of human wastes like me in the dregs of America."

There are positives and negatives to this story. On the plus side, it's kind of nice that Joba cares enough to get pissed off when someone insults his team.

On the other handddddddddd........

It's a pretty bad sign when one of your star players can be goaded into making terrible choices that end in arrest by some loser in a backwater strip joint. There's also the fact that Joba was drinking up a red storm and had his car nearby. You have to wonder about the intent, even if he didn't get riled by the Lincoln Ogler.

When the cops pulled him over, his blood alcohol content was .134, almost twice the legal limit. For the sake of my own curiosity, I broke out the trusty BAC Calculator. Turns out, if you weigh 235 pounds like Joba, draining 10 drinks in 4 hours will give you a BAC of .113. Not quite there yet...10 drinks in 2 hours, though, gives us .137. I have no idea how long Joba was making the rounds, but it looks like he was maintaining a steady rate of 5 drinks per hour, or 1 every 12 minutes.

It it just me, or does this kinda make Joba even more loveable? I don't want him to become a crazy drunk, and I'm glad nobody got hurt in his little escapade, but there's something endearing about the fact that one of America's best-known baseball phenoms goes straight back to his Bumblefuck origins when the season ends, gets hammered, hits the local skin dives, and goes into a childish rage when someone insults his team. Only Joba, my friends, only Joba.


Anyway, he finally went to court, and they slapped him on the wrist with a $400 fine and a 60-day license suspension. Judging by his statement afterward, he has completely, totally, and absolutely learned his lesson...

"I am glad to put the legal aspect of this behind me."

"The drinking aspect, on the other hand...well, let's not make any rash decisions. There's a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous..."

"I made a mistake and hope over time to turn this into a positive learning experience for me and others."

"Again, I want to emphasize that this will happen over time. I'm still young, and you can't expect me to have grasped the full significance in a mere seven months. Right now, I'm going to play it safe and think of this as an 'experience.' Some day, it might become a 'learning experience,' and later, much later- and this day, mind you, may never come- I might be ready to take that last step and call it a 'positive learning experience.'"


Opening day is Monday! Things to look forward to next week in Seth Curry Saves Duke!:

-"Live" blog of the Yankees opener against Baltimore. By live, I mean that I will be writing live, making furious edits Monday to make myself look like a genius, and posting Tuesday. We'll call it a "tape delay" blog.

-A heartfelt tribute to a player I'm supposed to hate.

-Possible tape delay blog of the Final Four (this really depends on how sober I remain on Saturday).

-The Villanova story, which ends with the greatest March Madness-themed retort in the history of March Madness-themed retorts.

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