Their fight was over before it was over.
Joba Chamberlain said there’s no bad blood between him and legendary catcher Yogi Berra, after the Yankee hurler was caught on tape mocking the former Bomber backstop.
“Yog is great and I got a chance to talk to him on the phone, and he knows I love him and he loves me, too,” Chamberlain said yester day, before the Yankees played the Baltimore Ori oles.
“Yogi is Yogi and Joba is Joba and that is the way it is.”
It was like déjà vu all over again at the Berra household, where Yogi’s wife also said there are no hard feelings.
“Yogi loves Joba and Joba loves Yogi,” said Carmen Berra, pinch hitting for her hubby who was traveling out of town.
“Their relationship is per fect.”
During the Oct. 18 drunken- driving bust in Lincoln, Neb., a rambling Chamberlain mocked Berra about his height.
The raucous relief pitcher blathered that he was a catcher in high school and is now good friends with one of the game’s all-time greatest catchers.
Chamberlain yesterday of fered an olive branch to New Yorkers, who he dismissed to police as rude and lacking man ners.
“I am not the player, or the individual who I am, without New York fans,” he said. “It was no disrespect to anybody in New York.”
The 23-year-old said he has no one to blame but himself for the unflattering police tape that emerged this week.
“If I don’t put myself in the situation to begin with, I don’t have to answer any of those questions,” said Chamberlain, who pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and was sentenced to probation.
On the video, Chamberlain made cracks about Berra’s diminutive stature — which didn’t keep him from winning three American League MVP awards in the 1950s.
“He might not be as tall as the front of your car,” Chamberlain said as he joked with the state trooper arresting him.
But Berra’s wife, Carmen, said laughs about Yogi’s height are common when he visits the Yanks clubhouse.
“Yogi’s not upset by it,” she said. “They kid him all the time about getting smaller. It’s nothing.”