It was nothing but a con Joba.
A New Jersey screwball who is a dead ringer for Joba Chamberlain told The Post he enjoyed summer of fun impersonating the Yankee pitcher – improving his stats with the ladies, while scoring free food and drinks.
Ryan Ward, 29, of Asbury Park, was finally taken out of the game Aug. 13 by Belmar cops, who charged him with criminal simulation and theft of services.
“It was joke that got out of hand. Obviously, I know I am not him,” Ward said. “But for the 15 minutes of fame . . . it is what it is.”
Ward said he first started getting mistaken for the corn-fed Nebraska native last fall.
“Ever since the playoffs last year, where [Joba] was attacked by the bugs in Cleveland, people started insisting I was him on the street,” he said. “It got to the point where my clothes were getting ripped off when I went out to bars.”
But it wasn’t until June that he started to play along – even wearing a Joba-style flat-brimmed hat and sunglasses.
“A friend said, ‘Why don’t you just go with it and have fun?’ ” said Ward, who was released on $10,000 bail.
Cops first ran into Ward at a Belmar bagel shop, Police Chief Jack Hill said.
After ordering a bagel and coffee, Ward reached into his pockets, told the manager he didn’t have the $1.50, and then pointed to a picture of Chamberlain in a newspaper sports section and asked, “Do you know who I am?” Hill said.
The phony got his free bagel, but a cop caught up with him and slapped him with a citation and stern warning.
But Ward only became more brazen, police said.
“He was selling autographs for free beer and money at a bar here on a night Joba Chamberlain was pitching and the game was on TV,” Hill said.
Ward, a Phillies fan, admittedly made the rounds of Belmar and other Jersey Shore towns for weeks, scoring dozens of free drinks before police arrested him.
Ward even duped a Spring Lakes Heights police officer, another cop told The Post.
“He had him totally fooled into buying him drinks,” the officer said. “We have all been having a pretty good laugh about it here.”
Ward went into a Belmar real-estate office and told a broker he was Chamberlain and wanted to buy a house for his father.
At Sports Nut Cards and Collectibles, Ward told store manager Don Jones the truth.
“By the time he came here, the word was out he was a phony,” Jones said. “He admitted it. He said he was doing it to get girls, and he was successful with it.”
Ward signed his best Chamberlain autograph, which, compared to the store’s actual collectibles, looked nothing like the real thing.
Chamberlain has said he was told about the impostor and was glad more serious crimes had not been committed in his name.