TAMPA — Joba Chamberlain’s short life after the Yankees has undergone several changes.
He is a member of the Detroit Tigers. Dairy products were removed from his diet and 20 pounds from a thick frame vanished thanks to a chef hired to cook his meals in Lincoln, Neb. During offseason throwing workouts, he noticed his right arm angle was too high and lowered it.
Yet despite how trying at times his stay in pinstripes was, what has remained is a thankfulness to the Yankees for giving him the platform to learn as a player and grow as a man.
“I had some great times and some terrible times,’’ Chamberlain told The Post Wednesday. “You use all that together to make yourself better. Having this offseason to put it all together and put it in perspective, obviously I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity in New York. It taught me so much. More so than the baseball side. It taught me to be a better father, taught me patience.
“There is nothing I can take back from those seven years from winning a World Series to playing with Hall of Fame players. I can’t look back on that and say there was a bad thing because I learned so much. I am certainly looking forward to being in Detroit, it’s a great organization. At times you have to move on.’’
After a disastrous 2013 season in which he was basically a mop-up reliever in the second half and booed often by the same Yankee Stadium customers who fell in love with him in 2007, Chamberlain signed a one-year deal for $2.5 million as a free agent with Detroit. Joe Nathan will close and the Tigers hope Chamberlain can fill in somewhere in the sixth, seventh or eighth innings.
Since signing with the Yankees in 2006, Chamberlain has only known one organization. Now it’s time to dive into another, but he isn’t going to delete the New York memories.
“New York is always a piece of my heart,” said Chamberlain, whose entrance into the Yankees’ universe in 2007 turned out to be too good to sustain thanks to injuries (shoulder, Tommy John surgery and right ankle dislocation) and the club shifting him from reliever to starter and back to reliever. “You can’t ever let it leave. You can turn the page and you have to take everything that came with it and use it to your advantage.
“I don’t think [New York] will ever be gone. It won’t.’’
There are three Tigers-Yankees spring training games and seven regular-season meetings, all in August.
“You check that date on the schedule. I would be lying if I said I didn’t check it,’’ Chamberlain said. “Do I feel I have something to prove? Yeah, we always feel we have something to prove. I play this game to prove that I am the best.’’