Chris Cody remembers the sunny afternoon exactly two years and one day ago, when he stared down Joba Chamberlain and won.
Cody remembers the crowd of 8,063 fans at Hawks Field in Lincoln, Neb., rooting madly for Chamberlain’s sixth-seeded Nebraska Cornhuskers against his Manhattan College Jaspers in that June 2, 2006 NCAA Tournament regional game.
Cody remembers the nerves, the adrenaline and the camaraderie he shared with his teammates as they defeated Chamberlain, 4-1, in his final collegiate start before the Yankees drafted him. Cody, 24, now pitches for the West Virginia Power, a Single-A affiliate of the Brewers. He is on his own road to the bigs.
PHOTO GALLERY: Joba’s Last College Start
But he thinks of that day often. It’s the highlight of his baseball career.
“I would definitely have to rank it number one,” said Cody, a native of Brewster, NY. “Taking everything into account – the weight of the game, what was on the line – and couple that with the actual statistics.”
Cody was brilliant. The left-hander threw 142 pitches en route to the complete-game victory. He allowed one run on eight hits and struck out seven. He outpitched Chamberlain, who left with one out and two runners on base in the eighth inning with Manhattan already leading, 2-1. Both runners scored to give Cody insurance runs that he didn’t need.
Matt Rizzotti and John Fitzpatrick supplied all the offense necessary when they connected for back-to-back home runs off Chamberlain to begin the second inning. They jumped on hittable pitches early in the count, something Manhattan coach Kevin Leighton instructed them to do.
“We wanted to be aggressive and swing early in the count before [Chamberlain] got two strikes on [us],” Leighton said. “We wanted to avoid that slider in the dirt. The first inning, I thought we were in for a long day. He struck out two guys and did that fist pump that he does and the crowd went nuts.
“Next inning, we got two runs. Don’t get me wrong, he pitched great against us, but it is exciting to watch him striking out major league all-stars and think back to the back-to-back home runs we hit off him.”
Rizzotti, a Floral Park native now in the Phillies organization, hit an 0-1 pitch. Fitzpatrick, from Yonkers, ripped the first pitch he saw over the left-center field fence.
“He threw me a first-pitch breaking ball,” recalled Fitzpatrick, 23. “Kind of on the outside corner. It hung a little bit. It certainly wasn’t one of the better sliders he threw.”
Perhaps that’s something the Blue Jays will look for tonight in The Bronx, where Chamberlain will make his first major-league start. But to those upstart Jaspers – starting, relieving, home, road – it doesn’t matter. They marvel at what Chamberlain has accomplished in such a short time.
“You could tell he had ability,” said Fitzpatrick, who played a season in the Pirates organization before he walked away this spring. He plans to attend law school. “Some guys just get it. They were born to do that. He’s been as dominant a reliever as there’s been in baseball, and I don’t think you can expect that out of any 23-year-old kid.”
The Yankees now expect Chamberlain to be a dominant starter. Leighton likes the move, but not the timing of it. Cody grew up a Mets fan, but said he roots for Chamberlain.
“The better he does, the better me and my teammates look,” said Cody, who has a tape of the game. “When I feel nostalgic, I’ll watch a couple innings of it. I’ll call up a few of my teammates and ask how they’re doing. We’ll say, ‘Did you see Joba pitch the other day? Can you believe that?’ “
dtomasino@nypost.com