Like Father...
Like Father...
When it comes to keeping quiet on a hunting trip, 8-year-olds aren't exactly the best company. So, when Chipper Jones was a boy, his father Larry tried to sneak out of their Pierson, Fla., house by himself at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
"When you're hunting with hounds down here, it's just a little more pleasant to do it with older, less-noisy company," says Larry. "So, I thought I could leave before Chipper woke up."
"And then I'd come down the stairs half asleep with one leg hanging out of my Levis," Chipper remembers, "and I'd say, 'Dad, you're not gonna leave me, are ya?' and he'd say, 'No, of course not. I was just going to check on the dogs,' knowing full well that he was trying to leave without me."
Knowing full well that he had been "caught," Larry confesses, in the slow, soothing, honest drawl that his only child has adopted.
As father and son tell the hunting story at two different times, they use the same phrases, the same pauses, and the same laugh as they describe the scene. One is sitting in his home in Pierson, while the other is sitting in the Braves clubhouse before batting practice. One is 47, the other, 25. One is a teacher who has a fern business on the side; one plays professional baseball and has his own self named candy bar. But the differences are few.
"I'm basically a clone of my dad," Chipper says. "We were both jocks in high school, we both enjoy the same things, and we even have a lot of the same facial tendencies -- the squint, the smile...I see some of his movements when I'm out there on the field, when I watch myself on TV. And that's unusual for a son to notice the similarities."
"He plays the game an awful lot like I used to play in college (as a shortstop at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla.)," Larry says. "He's a much better player than I ever was, but as far as his competitiveness, that's from me."
Chipper's name also comes from Dad. The Braves' popular third baseman was born Larry Wayne Jones Jr., and for the first few months of his life, it was "Big Larry" and "Little Larry," explains the elder Jones. "Even as a baby, everyone thought he looked like me. [His mother] Lynne said let's just call him Chip. So, when he was three or four months old, we started calling him Chipper."
Today more than ever before, Chipper Jones is a "chip off the ol' block". With his wife Karin and a "family" of two 70 pound golden retrievers, Chipper is mature beyond his years. His home runs and his All-American looks make him one of the most marketable, most loved players in baseball. But all that aside, Chipper is a man who values his privacy, wants to be home when he and Karin have children, and still calls his dad his best friend.
Normal country kid
Pierson is one of those towns that you miss if you blink. There is one main road, Highway 17, and it just got its first traffic light recently. The fern business is big business in Pierson, a town of 1,500 that ships more than 90 percent of the world's decorative greens.
"When Chipper was growing up, our closet neighbors were two or three miles away; it's a very rural community," Larry explains. "It's a place where everyone knows everyone else. If you went hunting, most of the people in town were hunting with you."
Larry says that "dads and sons" spent a lot of time together; recreation was hunting, fishing, golf and Little League.
"I'm fortunate because he gravitated toward the things I like to do," says Larry. "He grew up as my and Lynne's best friend as well as being our son.
"He was just a normal country kid growing up," continues Larry. "He wasn't a whole lot of trouble, but he wasn't an angel either. The first day of first grade, they called me to come into school because Chipper had bitten another kid. I got there and asked him why he diid it, and he stuck his lower lip out and said, 'He stole my pencil.' "
There are few stories from the classroom compared to those from the backyard, where Larry and Chipper spent countless afternoons playing the game of the day.
"Whatever was in season, we played," Chipper remembers. "We had a big backyard, and me and Dad would go one-on-one whenever it was baseball season. He'd always throw to me."
Larry and Chipper played with a tennis ball and a 30-inch PCV pipe because it was cheaper than playing with an aluminum bat and a baseball.
"Sometimes we'd watch the Saturday afternoon game and then go out back and imitate the lineups," Chipper says. "When a left-handed hitter came up, we'd have to hit left-handed; when a right-handed hitter came up, we'd hit right-handed. When I was 11 or 12, I started to beat him."
Chipper spent his first year of high school at Pierson's Taylor High, where Larry has taught algebra now for 25 years. Sophomore year, Chipper went to the Bolles School, a boarding school in Jacksonville that he led to the state championship with a .448 batting average. As a high school senior, he was the Braves' first selection and top overall pick in the nation in the 1990 amateur draft. He made his debut in Atlanta (about 350 miles from Pierson) in 1995 and was named National League Rookie Player of the Year in a poll of players conducted by The Sporting News (he was runner-up to Dodgers pitcher Hideo Nomo for the official NL Rookie of the Year).
In the 1995 postseason, Chipper hit .364 with three home runs and eight RBIs. After the Braves won the World Series, Larry was in the clubhouse during the celebration, and Chipper put his arms around him and said, "Can you believe it, Dad? I'm a World Champion!"
Larry gets the chills just talking about it. He says, "That moment may be the highlight of my life."
Friends first
In addition to teaching and growing ferns, Larry is an assistant baseball coach at Stetson, where the effect of being "Chipper Jones' dad" is powerful.
"It gives me instant credibility with my players," Larry says. "The fact that I'm his dad and he's made it to the big leagues helps with our recruiting, and we use it. It's been a blessing to me."
But Larry thinks of his son first as a friend, then a son, then a baseball player, and Chipper echoes those sentiments about his father.
"I don't think of him as a baseball coach. I think of him as my best friend," Chipper says. "I talk to my dad about a lot of things most sons can't talk to their dads about -- like life."
Every year, Larry and Chipper get plenty of time to talk about life, just one-on-one.
"He always treats me to a trip out West or to Canada," says Larry. "We'll fish a little, hunt a little, play a little golf. Last year, he took me to Saskatchewan for eight days to deer hunt. Just the two of us."
Once you get Larry Jones started talking about his son, he could go on like a long night of baseball. He gushes with affection and pride and only complains about the added attention of being a public figure's father.
"Everyone I've known in my life, I've heard from in the last few years. I probably have 15 to 20 good friends, but some people think I must have 200,000 good friends. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy as the dickens that people like him and support him," Larry says. "I'm awful proud of him, of the person he's grown up to be, regardless of the baseball player. When you have kids, they don't come with a manual, so you have to do it by trial and error and hope you do things right."
"I think I turned out okay," says Chipper, modestly. "If someday I'm half the dad my dad is, I'll be a great one."
By Melanie D. Goldman
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