A Confession

I will start with a confession: I pump my fist.

I also clap my hands. I cheer from the first pitch until the last out and then usually hang around the players’ gate and cheer some more.

Baseball is emotional for those who live in walk-up apartments and ride crowded trains and work second and third jobs to save money for tickets and scorecards and T-shirts that say: Joba Rules.

Sometimes the game makes us smile and it always gives us hope.

Joba Chamberlain gives us hope, too. We find it in his smile and his fastball and his fist pump.

Some people don’t like any of that. They think Joba should feel the way they tell him to feel and act the way they tell him to act.

But baseball players aren’t made in factories or pulled from dusty old record books. They are people with hopes and fears and dreams and feelings. They are just like everyone else in a lot of ways, but they’re special because they make the rest of us feel a little bit better on summer days and nights.

Sometimes they make us feel so good that we pump our fist.