COMMENTARY : It’s a Chip Shot: Jones Over Nomo for N.L. Rookie

If the National League’s Rookie of the Year is anyone other than Chipper Jones, the honorable voters made the mistake of voting for the sensational over the substantial. Hideo Nomo wrote a happy story for us in this summer of baseball’s discontent, a Japanese marvel come to rescue us from the melancholy of our own making. But the Chipper Jones story is better, for four reasons.

First, Atlanta’s switch-hitting rookie was asked to hit third in the lineup. His entire major league experience was three at-bats in 1993. He sat out 1994 after knee surgery. He worked for a veteran team with a world championship as its announced goal; indeed, anything less than such accomplishment would be considered a failure of the Buffalo Bills kind.

Yet Atlanta’s manager, Bobby Cox, has a casual explanation for putting a kid 23 years old in his best hitter’s spot. “Hit .320, .330 in the minors,” he says. “Doubles, triples, power, baserunning. Going to be All-Star. Forever.”

A second reason to like the Jones story: The kid did the job. He hit .265 with 23 home runs and 86 runs batted in. In the field, a natural shortstop moved to third base, his only problem came on throwing errors late in the season when Atlanta had built a big lead. “Got kinda suspect then,” Jones said, “because we were more or less going through the motions. But with the playoffs, we’ll turn it up a notch.”

A third reason: Jones played every day, Nomo every fifth day.

Fourth: The good face. Which takes some explaining . . .

Old baseball scouts believe you can look at a kid’s face and see if he’s got the thing to make his dreams real. “You ever hear of ‘the good face’?” the Dodgers’ Al Campanis used to say. “Some scout would give me a report on a boy, and I’d say, ‘Tell me about his face,’ or ‘Does he have the good face?’ ”

People see Chipper Jones and say he looks like the young Mickey Mantle. Hold the photographs side by side. Mantle at 23, Jones at 23. You can see it. Or you can put Jones alongside Eddie Mathews. “Reminds me of Eddie,” Bobby Cox said. “The lips, the eyes, the face, the way he moves. Eddie Mathews.”

The best part is, we’re talking about a look and we’re talking about more. We’re talking about a kid who can play. He has the good face. There’s maturity there, determination. There’s the look of a kid who knows what some of us a lot older never know. He knows who he is. He even knows what makes him the player he is: “It’s a necessary arrogance.”

We’re sitting on the splintery pine bench of Atlanta’s dugout. Jones counts the humble Dale Murphy as a model. So he says “arrogance” so softly as to remove the word’s bite. He means a trust in his talent, a self-assurance so strong he could say he’s disappointed in not hitting .300.

“But putting me in the three hole,” he said, “Bobby wanted power and runs batted in. I did all right there, and .265 isn’t that bad. But I still think I’m a .300 hitter in this league.”

Truth is, in every league he has been extraordinary because he comes with a baseball gift and baseball savvy. By instinct and by teaching he already is a craftsman, recognized as a superstar in the making by his teammates.

Center fielder Marquis Grissom: “In two, three years, Chipper will be hitting 30, 35 home runs.” Right fielder David Justice: “What’s impressed me most is that Chipper hasn’t fallen under to all the hype and expectations from everybody.” Relief pitcher Mark Wohlers: “Chipper’s a special player. Before I leave here, I’ll get his autograph and Greg Maddux’s.”

Four times this season, Jones had four-hit games. Three times, he won games with ninth-inning home runs--and this happy summer came after the ’94 season, the saddest summer of his life.

“It was my first summer ever without playing baseball,” he said. “Just sitting there at home watching games on television, not being able to do anything, was very depressing.” often the depression felt like a load he couldn’t carry. Then he learned he didn’t have to carry it alone.

He can smile now: “My wife, Karin, inspired me to get my butt into the weight room and work out.” To quote his father, Larry Jones: “Karin cried with Chipper when it was time to cry, and she kicked him in the rear when needed.”

Fitting, then, that Karin Jones would come in for her own touch of fame this year. Carrying a drink up an aisle at the ballpark, she spilled it. The accident was taped by ESPN, which used her fumble on SportsCenter the same night her husband hit a dramatic home run.

“Yeah, we go home that night,” Chipper Jones said, “and we see Karin on television. She’s all over the news. But that’s good. It’s good that wives get some of the headlines.” The next night, someone had a big sign: “If I Was Married to Chipper Jones, I’d Spill My Drink, Too.”

Early in the season, the rookie’s parents came to the ballpark. Jones says his father taught him to play; his mother taught him to believe.

Father and son used to go between their house and the hay barn. Throwing a tennis ball, they took turns trying to strike each other out. Dad won. And Dad won. And then Dad lost some games. Soon, Dad lost ‘em all. The boy was 13 when Dad told Mom, “I can’t beat him anymore.”

About then, the boy became a switch-hitter. The man and the boy would watch a Saturday afternoon game on television. They’d go out by the hay barn and the boy would be every hitter in both lineups. Right-handers, he hit right-handed. Left-handers, he’d turn around. Dad couldn’t throw a ball past the boy from either side. Dad told Mom, “Lynn, this is scary.”

Dad and Mom came to the ballpark on a night when their boy hit the first big league home run they ever saw him hit. It won a game in the ninth inning. Dad and Mom came out of their seats, made happy noises, hugged the famous Karin, and mostly they cried.