ATLANTA — Flanked by his family, his former manager and a group of teammates he hates to leave behind, Chipper Jones delivered the news that’s been looming for years:
It’s time to call it a career.
With his 40th birthday approaching and a long string of injuries slowing him down, Jones announced Thursday he will retire after this season as the Atlanta Braves’ third baseman.
“I have fulfilled everything,” Jones said during a news conference at the team’s spring training stadium in Kissimmee, Fla. “There’s nothing left for me to do.”
Jones, who has spent his entire 18-year career with Atlanta, actually planned to retire after the 2010 season, only to change his mind. He’ll give it one more year with the Braves, then become a fulltime dad to his three children.
“I just want to make it final,” Jones said.
He praised the Braves organization, calling Bobby Cox “the greatest manager any of us will ever know,” thanked team executives John Schuerholz and Frank Wren for building a perennial winner and fought back tears as he turned to his teammates.
“I’ve been thinking about this and the reason I stayed around is you guys,” Jones said. “I played on teams where clubhouse cohesion wasn’t there. That never happened with you guys.”
Around baseball, Jones was praised for this long, consistent career, which included the National League MVP award in 1999, an NL batting title in 2008, seven All-Star games — and, quite possibly, will include an induction ceremony at Cooperstown.
New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, whose 17-year stint with one team is surpassed only by Jones among active players, has always been impressed by the way the Atlanta player carries himself.
“He just looks like a ballplayer, you know? His actions, his mannerisms, everything he does,” Jeter said. “I really can’t say enough good things about him. The way he’s gone about his business, his consistency, how he took care of himself, what he means to the team. He could flat-out hit. He’s a Hall of Famer, for sure.”
He should be a first-ballot selection, according to Cox, who attended the news conference with the only other manager Jones will have in his big league career, current Braves skipper Fredi Gonzalez. Schuerholz, the former General Manager and now team president, and Wren are the only GMs of the Jones era. Stability meant a lot to the third baseman.
“To have two top executives and only two managers at one table after all these years says a lot about this organization,” Jones said. “There have been times when I could have gone into free agency to see if the grass is greener, but it never was.”
While other players came and went, Jones was always the one constant in the clubhouse.
“He was the face of the franchise,” said former teammate Andruw Jones, who’s now with the Yankees. “You don’t see it too much any more. It’s hard for players to stay with one organization.”
No matter what happens in his final season, Chipper Jones will go down as one of the game’s greatest switchhitters, a guy who could hit for average (.304 in his career) and power (454 home runs and 1,561 RBI).
While Jones has no desire to go into managing, he has indicated a desire to be hitting instructor some day.
“I have such a passion for hitting,” Jones said last month. “I’m kind of a one-track-mind kind of guy. I can’t have my hands in a bunch jars and be delegating responsibility for a bunch of different areas. I’d much rather stay focused on just one area and be able to do that well. While I think I could manage, I really don’t have the urge to manage. I’d much rather be a hitting coach than a manager.”
Sports, Pages 23 on 03/23/2012