Chipper!
Chipper!
Jones fulfilling dreams with uncommon style for a rookie -- or veteran
Who is Dane Iorg? Chipper Jones just might know.

Flash back a decade to the backyard of the Jones' home in DeLand, Florida. It's October, and 13-year-old Chipper is imitating the role of Iorg, a career pinch-hitter, in a pivotal at-bat in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series between the Royals and Cardinals.

"And here's the pitch to Iorg, lined to right. Here comes Sundberg. He's safe, and the Royal's win."

So we weren't there. But scenes like that were played out often enough at the Jones' home, where young Chipper would play many roles: broadcaster, fielder, hitter and umpire.

He was always the hero, whether he was stroking the game-winning hit or making a sensational diving grab in the hole like Ozzie Smith, then throwing a strike across the diamond. Let the other kids fatasize about slam dunks and end zone dances. Larry Wayne Jones was going to be a baseball player.

The game consumed him. It still does.

In an era when many players show an alarming lack of knowledge about baseball history -- Pirates shortstop Jay Bell, for example, reportedly asked, "Who's that?" while watching Mickey Mantle on ESPN repeats of "Home Run Derby" -- Chipper Jones reassures the game's devotees, blushing when told his manager likens him to a young Eddie Mathews, the Braves' Hall of Fame third baseman.

"It's nice to see a guy coming up who worries more about substance than style," says Colorado Rockies shortstop Walt Weiss. "I'm more impressed with him every time I see him play. It takes a special kind of player to handle these big-game situations like he has, especially considering he's a rookie."

Weiss, you might recall, came up with the Oakland Athletics around the time Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire made their celebrated entries into the American League. Of course, Jones has been at it for a while -- almost all of his 23 years. When the elementary school bell rung, young Larry was on the diamond with the high school team his dad managed. He didn't get in the way. He just absorbed the game. And it wasn't long before people told Larry Jones Sr. that his son would show them all a thing or two about playing it.

"He was always at the ballpark, couldn't wait to get there," says the elder Jones, now an assistant coach at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla. "But it's still unbelievable to watch him out on the field. The odds of him making it, of anybody making it, are astronomical. We both dreamed it would happen. Sometimes we still can't believe it."

Not that you would be able to tell. The ease that seems to accompany Jones every time he steps on the field was acquired from his father. It's what John Schuerholz labels his "supreme confidence."

"My dad always taught me to have a certain arrogance about your game, and that's what I've tried to do," says Jones. These days everyone with a press pass is trying to figure out what makes a baby-faced kid named Chipper so successful at a man's game.

"I've had this attention since the first say of my pro career, so I've gotten accustomed to it," he says. "But to tell you the truth, the stuff from (the press) goes in one ear and out the other. The only pressure I feel is the pressure I put on myself, and I try not to do that."

Again, a lesson from his father: Don't get too high and don't get too low. The game has too many ups and downs for you to worry about each one. "I've been real surprised at how well he's handled everything on and off the field," says his father. "He's never been real impressed with 'celebrity.' I'd be very surprised if all this goes to his head.

"Anyway, Karin wouldn't let it." That's Karin as in Mrs. Chipper Jones. She's not to be taken lightly. When Chipper tore up his knee in spring training last year, causing him to miss the entire season (or what was played of it), it was Karin who told him to stop feeling sorry for himself, to "get his butt into the weight room," as her husband recalls.

"I was very depressed for awhile," he says. "I'd never gone a summer without playing baseball. I was just lost without it. Karin was a big help."

Karin Jones describes those first few months after the injury as "extremely, extremely tough." Not only was Chipper unable to pursue his passion but he had to watch idly while his friends and teammates who came up with him through the Braves system -- Ryan Klesko, Tony Tarasco and Javier Lopez -- filled major roles. "He couldn't even watch a game that first month," she says. "Baseball is definitely a part of Chipper Jones, adn he just can't go without it."

His dad still remembers the day after the injury, when there was still some question as to its severity. "I remember so well he looked at me and said, 'Dad, this may be it.' It brought tears to my eyes. We just all hurt for him so badly."

Everyone, especially those looking for young ambassadors of the game, breathed a sigh of relief when the surgery was a success. Baseball needs Chipper as much as he needs baseball.

"I'll be honored to tell my grandkids one day that I played with Chipper Jones," says Mike Mordecai, the Braves' unlikely postseason hero. Mordecai, drafted as a shortstop, was chosen a year ahead of Jones. After Chipper's selection, Mordecai knew the phenom would be a giant hurdle in his career: "I knew all I could do is take care of myself."

So, it would be easy, even natural, for Mordecai to quietly resent or envy his teammate, but he chooses reverence.

"How could you not?" Mordecai asks. "When I palyed with him in '93 at Richmond, I knew he was something special. And he has a respect for the game which a lot of guys don't have. That's all the game asks is that you respect it. You find most Hall-of-Famers didn't get there just by talent. They appreciated the game.

"What Chipper has done is just incredible," Mordecai continues. "Not only is he a rookie, but he missed all of last season and he's playing a position he never played before. People just don't realize how amazing that is."

Weiss, one of the game's top defensive shortstops, is equally impressed with the ease Jones has displayed switching from short to third. "It's not as easy as he makes it look," he says. "Any time you change positions it's tough, but particularly in the infield. It's just a completely different game, the reaction time, the way the ball comes off the bat. It takes a lot of adjustment.

"That, Chipper realizes, is just a part of the game, whether it's adjusting to the hitters or the pitchers. "Once you realize how tough baseball is, you might have some success," he says. So, he's hard to satisfy. Sure, Jones hit 23 home runs this year and drove in 86 runs, but it bothers him he didn't hit .300 (.265). "I'm a .300 hitter, always have been. I'm more of an average hitter than a power hitter."

He'll be headed back home to New Smyrna Beach, Fla. this winter to work on bringing that average up to where he's certain it should be. "He told me right after the regular season he was going to come home and we'd work on his right-handed swing," says his dad, who taught the natural righty how to hit lefty.

The old Game of the Week was their guide. They'd watch together and then father and son would go out back. Chipper would emulate the hitters he saw that day, hitting from the appropriate side of the plate while Vin Scully called the game in his head.

These days, Jones isn't very big on imitating anyone. He doesn't like to compare or be compared. But he says he's learned a lot from shortstop Jeff Blauser, especially as his teammate has endured a particulary frustrating season at the plate.

"This guy's a professional about everything," Jones says. "He plays the game the way it should be played, and off the field, he knows how to respond to all the attention, good and bad."

That's how Jones wants people to think of him. But admirers have a tough time stopping there. "He's already a complete player," says Weiss. "You can't say that about many rookies. You're talking about a potential franchise player. Heck, he's just about there already."

And in 1995, 10 years after the pinch-hitter with the funny name helped propel the Royals to their only World Series title, there was Chipper in the postseason, stroking game-winning hits and making diving grabs in the infield. Just like he dreamed it.

By Chris Boone
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