Islander In The Sun

Sporting News, The, Oct 9, 2000 by Sean Deveney

"I am 50 years old now," says Josepha, who is a supervisor for Curacao's phone company. "Think about it. When I was 17, it was 1967, and it was a lot different then. Even if there were scouts here, I would not be able to afford to go play. It would have been nice to try. But I don't mind. I like watching Andruw. That's enough for me."

"It was our dream, too," says Kirindongo, now the sports editor for La Prensa, the local Papiamento newspaper. "I think anybody who was playing baseball and really loved playing baseball wanted to play in the U.S., but no one was here to see. I watch Jones, and it makes me happy to see him playing so well."

As a kid, Jones would attend his father's games and practices. He would catch flies in the outfield during batting practice. He would tell the older players he was going to play on television some day.

"I played with all those guys," he says. "My dad is always telling me about the great players, and I have seen them. I was always around them, and I know if I do well, it makes all of them happy."

The season is nearly over, yet Jones pretends not to know when batting practice is. The Braves are in St. Louis, and he is poking around the visitors clubhouse three hours before game time, looking for hitting coach Merv Rettenmund. "You seen Merv? You seen Merv?"

Jones is like a kid who wants to open Christmas presents an hour early. When he finally catches Rettenmund, he calls out, "Merv!" then raises his eyebrows and gives a quick nod, as if he and Rettenmund are in on some secret. Rettenmund plays the grumpy father, asking, "What? What do you want?" When Jones asks to go to the cage, Rettenmund sighs and says, "Oh, all right."

Jones and Rettenmund work before most games, and after some games, ironing out problems in Jones' swing while going over Rettenmund's tenets of hitting: keep your head down, wait for the pitch, drive the ball the opposite way, get your hands moving during the delivery. Jones says they are things he has known all along, but the difference is he is willing to take the lessons and use them at the plate. He no longer relies only on getting a fastball and using his natural ability. He has become a more thoughtful hitter.

"I'm a fastball hitter, and when they leave a fastball out over the plate, I am going to hit it," Jones says. "But if it is not a fastball, I can hit it, go to right. I make better adjustments now."

Last year, then Braves hitting coach Don Baylor tried to get through to Jones with pretty much the same message of patience and discipline Rettenmund preaches. But Jones felt he had no reason to work. He was a famous kid from a laid-back Caribbean island. He was so good defensively that the Giants' Barry Bonds said, "I have never seen a center fielder run a ball down the way he can." Why work? Jones' natural ability was enough.

Baylor grew frustrated by Jones' failure to work, and teammates would talk of aggravating "Andruw moments." In 1998, when Jones did not hustle after a fly ball to center, manager Bobby Cox pulled him from the game in the middle of an inning. After the game, Cox said, "He has got to grow up. It is as simple as that," and added that he could not fine Jones because he "had taken so much money from him, it's a joke. I don't know what to do."