It Seems He’s One of a Kind

For years, I was under the impression that there was a single ballplayer whose name was Larry Herndon Ruppert Jones Oscar Gamble Something Mumphrey. Or was it Humphrey?

Anyway, he was the same guy. I had no idea what he looked like, what color his hair was or if he had any, where he was from or even what his number was.

I figured he was a switch hitter because he seemed to be swinging from both sides of the plate. He seemed to play for the New York Yankees on and off. He got traded a lot.

He hit .261 or so, got 15 or 20 homers a year. He didn’t play regularly, got platooned. He didn’t get much ink but he had been around the big leagues 10 or more years, so you knew he could play. Joe Journeyman. Have bat, will travel.

He was a kind of composite you would dub Old Reliable if he played on, say, the Stengel Yankees. He had better than average speed. And he was always a free agent.

And, then, Ruppert Jones came to the California Angels, and I suddenly realized that Herndon Jones Gamble Mumphrey were a whole bunch of guys, and that they were all good. At least Jones sure was. The last time I looked, he was hitting about .280, he had 18 home runs and 50 runs batted in. He’d stolen six bases and had six game-winning hits.

It’s hard to believe this guy was walking the streets twice in the last two years, as available as a door-to-door salesman.

“I got free agency in 1983,” Jones recalls. “Nobody signed me. The Pirates let me try as a non-roster player but let me go. Then, Detroit asked me if I would go to their farm, Evansville.”

Jones hadn’t been in the minor leagues in nine years--unless you count the Seattle Mariners--but he went. He hit nine home runs and nine doubles and three triples in 48 games and drove in 45 runs. Jones was a hitter. He stole eight bases in those 48 games.

So, Detroit hastily called him up. All he did there was help them into their first championship in 16 years. He batted .284, hit 12 home runs, 12 doubles and drove in 37 runs the rest of the season. Oh, yes, he was platooned with Larry Herndon.

You would have thought there would be a clamor for his services, but Jones once again was abroad in the land, yours for the taking. Ruppert is one of the freest agents there ever was.

The California Angels, who had lost Fred Lynn, who had backed out of the big-star free-agent market, grabbed Jones. It was one of a series of moves that explains why today the team is in front of the division and winging.

What a lot of people didn’t know was that Ruppert’s outlook on life had undergone a dramatic change. He had found one of those self-help books on the market. A best-seller. The best-seller. The Bible.

“I had to change directions,” he says. “I had to grow. I hadn’t been growing. I was in a kind of self-destructing mode.

“I evaluated myself and found I had been standing in place.”

It was not as if Jones was a serious problem to anyone but himself. He was not a candidate for a CareUnit, although he did tend to take out his frustrations on a can of beer.

He found the Old Testament a better inspiration than Old Granddad.

“Don’t misunderstand me, I wasn’t onto anything out of control,” he says. “It was just that I didn’t understand myself. I wasn’t preparing myself mentally for life. I was just kind of slouching through it.”

Nobody had to teach Ruppert Sanderson Jones how to hit, run, field or slide. How to live required more complicated instruction.

He found it in the words of a veteran old coach named Micah and not in the pages of The Sporting News, but on Page 922 of the King James version of the Good Book. “It’s in Chapter 7,” he confides. “Verse 7.”

It reads: “Therefore, I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.”

Jones says he is the Lord’s free agent now. His new frame of mind has put him in position where he could be playing in a World Series two years in a row in two different uniforms.

He no longer comes into focus as a part of a hydra-headed outfielder with interchangeable parts. He makes you realize that Herndon Jones Gamble Mumphrey not only are not one guy, they are a pretty good team.

In fact, if they’re all as good as Ruppert Jones, they might be one of the greatest outfields since Cobb and Speaker played in the same one.