Lots of Reasons to Feel Chipper

Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — At a time when much of the baseball-watching world believed Chipper Jones had nothing left to show us, he showed us he’s still Chipper Jones. At 35 he had one of his greatest years, hitting .337 with 29 homers, driving in 102 runs and scoring 108. And where, he is asked, would he rank 2007 among his 14 big-league seasons on the scale of purely personal satisfaction?

“Fourteenth,” he says.

He’s kidding. Spring training 2008 has dawned with Chipper Jones feeling … well, chipper. Apart from the bruised thumbs suffered when he tripped over the opposing third baseman (more about that later), last season was free of the injuries that limited him to 109 games in 2005 and 110 in 2006.

A year ago we all were wondering if this demonstrably great player was near an end. Today, Jones says, “I want to play until I’m 40.”

About last season: “It was awfully gratifying for me to prove I could still play the game at a high level when a lot of people were writing me off and saying they should get rid of my salary.”

Some athletes pretend they don’t read and hear criticism. Jones admits he sees and hears everything. “I read y’all’s paper and go online and check out the rumor mill,” he says. (Indeed, he even participated, without being solicited, in David O’Brien’s AJC Braves blog two weeks ago. He logged in as “U Kno Who.”)

Does U Kno Who get mad when he sees someone post something less than positive?

“No,” Jones says. “I use it as positive motivation sometimes.”

The creeping consensus in spring 2007 was that Jones’ body was beginning to fail. Something was always going wrong — a hamstring, an oblique, a foot. What prevented him from believing he’d become decrepit was that it wasn’t always the same injury.

“Those last two years were really fluky [injuries]. It hasn’t been my body breaking down.”

Here he smiles in that wry Chipper way. “If Frenchy [Jeff Francoeur] takes a pitch and lets me steal third base [instead Francoeur grounded to third and Jones, running on the play, flipped over Pittsburgh’s Jose Bautista], I probably would’ve played 150 games last year.”

He played 134, his most since 2004, and he finished sixth in the Most Valuable Player voting, his best showing since he won the award in 1999. “Last year could have been my best all-around year. I was in the running for a Gold Glove — my errors were way down, and my fielding percentage was up — and I challenged for a batting title. And I hit .300 and drove in 100 and scored 100 just like I did when I was a younger cat.”

Sometimes it takes an outside observer to bring a familiar sight into sharper relief. Steve Phillips, once the Mets’ general manager and now an ESPN commentator, called Jones “the Derek Jeter of the National League” a couple of years ago, and Jeter is the most respected player in the sport. To be likened to him is the ultimate compliment. Jones took it as such.

“Jeter and I are good buddies,” he says. “We’ve squared off in a couple of World Series, and I think he’ll challenge 4,000 hits before he’s through. He’s a winner. I dare say I don’t think he’ll have any problem going into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.”

And his own Hall prospects? “I’m one of the guys who, if I quit right now, I wouldn’t make it. I’m on the cusp. The next five or six years will tell the tale.”

Until July 2007, Mark Teixeira was one of those outside observers. Today he hits behind Jones and says, “He’s the most underappreciated player in the game … No doubt Alex [Rodriguez] is the most talented player I’ve played with, but Chipper is right behind him.”

And then: “Chipper could get a lot more attention in New York or L.A., but he’s a country boy who likes to hunt and fish.”

If Jones indeed plays until he’s 40, he wants it to be in the only place he has ever played. “I’ve always wanted to finish here,” he says. “Atlanta is a laid-back town, and I’m not a big-city guy. I know I could probably garner more attention and accumulate more accolades in New York, but that’s not me.”

There was a time when the young Chipper was as beloved by Braves fans as Francouer is now, but the inevitable familiarity (and a messy divorce) took some luster off the golden boy. Still, Jones says, “I think I have a really good rapport with fans. They certainly make me feel that way when I’m out in public. You can’t go to dinner or to a movie without people showering you with praise. You’re never going to please everybody, and I’m not going to try. But I think I’m good enough for the majority.”

So here he stands: Larry Wayne Jones Jr., age 35, about to go to work on another February morning, feeling rather better this February than he did a year ago. “Last year I was putting a little pressure on myself after what had happened. This year I’m a little more relaxed.”

But not fully content. If he has learned nothing else, Chipper Jones has learned that baseball is about today and tomorrow, not yesterday. “At the end of the day,” he says, “I’ve still got to keep putting up numbers to hold everybody at bay. At my age, if you have one bad year everybody thinks you’re washed up. And I don’t want to hear it.”