Rising Star
Rising Star
After just three seasons in the majors, Chipper Jones has become a fixture in Atlanta. Its hard to imagine the Braves without him. He's approaching the popularity reached by Dale Murphy, who won consecutive National League MVP Awards in 1982-83.
Like Murphy, Jones is squeaky clean, all-American favorite who donates his time to charities and children. He's the type of young man every mother wants her daughter to marry...though much to the dismay of those mothers and daughters, he's already married.
Since he reached the majors to stay in 1995, however, Jones has discovered it's not always easy being Chipper.
His smile still causes teenage girls to swoon as he approaches, but it seems he's held to a higher standard every year, and his every twitch is studied and analyzed. A new haircut, described by a teammate as an attack by a weed whacker, caused headlines this spring. His appearances at card shows turn into Elvis sightings. He hasn't eaten a meal in a restaurant without interruption since reaching the big leagues.
Jones is one of the game's most recognized stars, and the price of the public's adulation is his privacy. Admittedly, he's to blame for much of the problem because he rarely turns down any request. He hasn't learned to say "No" to the dozens of invitations he receives every month to speak at schools, churches and youth groups or the requests to appear at charity events, hospitals and business meetings.
"It's tough at times. It's tough on my family," said Jones, who will turn 26 April 24th. "I do get a lot of attention. There's a lot asked of me time-wise, and sometimes my family feels a little left out and that hurts my feelings a little bit.
"I can handle the popularity and the attention around the ballpark, but when it filters outside the ballpark and into my home and into a movie theater or into a restaurant, that's when it bothers me. If there was one thing that I could eliminate from being a professional ballplayer, it would be those distractions away from the field."
On the field, Jones is one of the game's best players, a solid third baseman and run producer who reminds Bobby Cox of another Braves third baseman.
"He reminds me so much of Eddie Mathews," Cox said, referring to the Hall of Famer who played for the Braves from 1952-66. "He plays like him, runs like him. He's in the elite category of players, as far as I'm concerned."
Since his first season in 1995, when he was named the National League's Rookie of the Year by the Sporting News, Jones has elevated his game each year. Even so, he feels he hasn't fulfilled his potential. Though he's averaged 25 homers and 110 RBIs the last two years and has been named a National League All-Star each of those seasons, his numbers are on the second tier, below those of the game's superstars such as Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza.
"I'm still not where I want to be defensively," Jones said. "I think I can steal more bases, I think I can hit more home runs. I think I can hit for a higher average. I think there's a lot more I can do.
"People talk about having career years. I have yet to reach my career year. I'm a guy who's hit 30 home runs and driven in 110 runs, but I still don't think that's my career year. If I was to go 30-30 (home runs-steals), drive in 125 runs, win a Gold Glove, win a World Series on top of that, that would be a pretty good career year."
How much better can Jones be? It's easy to envision him as a 30-homer, 130-RBI hitter, numbers he might have reached last year if he had improved his right-handed swing.
A switch-hitter, his average from the right side fell 45 points last year (.295 to .250) and his home runs decreased from six to one. Frustrated by his lack of production, he headed to Florida several weeks before spring training started and worked with his father, Larry, an assistant coach at Stetson University in DeLand, to improve his right-handed swing.
Jones also admits to a sense of frustration at last October's loss to the Florida Marlins in the National League Championship Series, a six-game defeat that he contributed to with a critical defensive lapse in Game 1 and baserunning blunders in Games 3 and 4.
The boos he heard from the home crowd rang in his ears.
"I was disappointed in myself for those three mistakes," he said. "But if I had been in the stands, I probably would have been booing too. What, the fans aren't allowed to get frustrated? They were sensing just what we were feeling, that frustration of it slipping away. I don't blame them. I know I'm going to do things this year and we're going to do things that are going to win those fans back."
The frustration of watching the Marlins advance to the World Series drove Jones into seclusion this winter. He picked up his rifle and retreated into the woods, where he could hunt deer and reflect on the season's sour ending in private.
"I like to get away," he said. "At the end of the year, I was burned out. I didn't want to talk to anybody, I didn't want to to even think about it. I wanted to rest my mind and my body and just meditate for a little while. I thought the healthiest thing for me was to just not talk about it, not think about it, and just recover."
So far, there has been no fan fallout from Jones' NLCS flameout. Judging by the reaction to him at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex this spring, the Chipper phenomenon will continue building. Girls still call his name with breathless anticipation, and No. 10 jerseys still outnumber any other in the stands. A candy bar bearing his name appeared last year, he shot a commercial for Wendy's several weeks ago, and endorsement offers arrive regularly.
In a bull market, Chipper's stock keeps rising.
By Bill Zack
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