Deacon Is Ready for College Try

Grover William (Deacon) Jones thought he was ready to tackle the world. After all, he had been one of those all-everything high school stars at White Plains (N.Y.) High School. His football team never lost a game, but baseball was his first love.

The year was 1951.

“My mother and father,” he recalled, “were encouraging me to go to college.”

But Deacon was ready to romance that first love. The Chicago White Sox invited him to a tryout; the New York Giants invited him to a tryout; and finally, the Brooklyn Dodgers invited him to a tryout.

This was a glorious moment for a 17-year-old black kid from a poor neighborhood, a moment that only underscored his conviction that he was ready. There he was at Ebbets Field, running on the same grass and digging into the same dirt as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe.

After three days of this, Jones was sitting in the dugout wiping his sweating forehead.

And Jackie Robinson sat down next to him, and Jones will never forget the brief conversation.

“Grover,” Robinson said, “you have talent.”

“Thank you, Mr. Robinson,” Jones said.

“But you are going to college, aren’t you?” Robinson said.

“Yessir,” Jones answered.

That was it. Deacon Jones went to Ithaca College and earned a bachelor of science degree in physiotherapy. Baseball would ultimately become his career, but he couldn’t have known he would still be in the game in 1987 as the hitting coach for the San Diego Padres, who did not exist in “major league form” back when Deacon Jones and Jackie Robinson had their dugout chat. Robinson wanted to make sure he was ready for life, not just baseball.

In a different sense, Jackie Robinson, a man who touched his life so long ago, has again caused Deacon Jones to assess where he has been and where he is going.

Robinson himself did not cause this assessment, but rather the fact that this is the 40th anniversary of the year that Robinson broke the color barrier with the Dodgers.

To commemorate that occasion, Al Campanis--a longtime Dodger executive--was interviewed on national television the day the season opened. What happened in that interview has been thoroughly dissected. Campanis said blacks “lack the necessities” to handle top administrative with baseball clubs. He suggested they are unwilling to pay dues.

Jones was aghast.

“My first thought about the Campanis thing was that I was upset,” Jones said one evening this week. “Then I realized after reading what he said and thinking about what he said that he had gotten a little confused. I thought it was a shame, that I’d hate to see this man’s life or career ruined by one moment of indecision on his part. He had made some great contributions and I felt I had to have some sensitivity for the individual.”

Obviously, Deacon Jones came away with neither bitterness nor animosity toward Al Campanis.

But he started thinking about the lack of blacks in positions of authority in the game he loves.

“I had thought about working in administration,” he said, “but I’d dropped the idea . . . or put it on hold. The thought was still back there when this incident awakened me.”

What does he lack? What dues has he paid?

He has been in professional baseball for 30 years, losing two years to military service. He has played in minor leagues and parts of three seasons with Chicago in the American League. He has played winter ball in five other countries and learned to speak Spanish in the process. He has been a scout, instructor, minor league manager and now major league coach.

Grover (Deacon) Jones has experienced much more of baseball than the “big names” which are recycled time after time when someone is contemplating the absence of blacks in baseball’s hierarchy. You’ve seen them. Henry Aaron. Joe Morgan. Frank Robinson. Ernie Banks. Billy Williams. Willie Mays. The sameness is predictable.

Jones listened to the list and laughed.

“There are a lot of no-name people who are very well-qualified,” he said.

How about Deacon Jones?

Understand where he is coming from.

“When I was playing,” he said, “most blacks didn’t think upper management positions were attainable. Our role models were players like Jackie and Campy and Newcombe and Larry Doby. We didn’t have any role models off the field.”

If there are any more now than there were then, they are invisible men. This, of course, was the genesis of the Campanis controversy.

Again . . . how about Deacon Jones?

“I’ve had a lot of challenges in my life,” Jones said, “and I think I have at least one more in me. It would be a challenge being in a decision-making capacity off the field. Those last parts, decision-making and off the field, are the key parts.”

Jones already has challenges, though decision-making is not part of his job description. As the Padres’ hitting instructor, he leans against the rail at the back of the batting cage quietly throwing challenges at the hitters. He mixes humor with wisdom. The idea is to get young hitters to listen.

Deacon Jones does know a thing or two about listening and absorbing what he hears.

Jackie Robinson found out.

Six years after Robinson gave him that brief but stern pep talk on the importance of a college education, Jones ran into the Dodgers in Atlanta. Jones, a minor leaguer in the White Sox organization at the time, spotted Robinson.

“Mr. Robinson,” he said, “my name is Grover Jones, but they call me Deacon . . . “

Deacon Jones said Robinson interrupted him before he could finish reminding him who he was.

“It’s good to see you again,” Robinson said. “Now, tell me, did you go to college?”