FanPost

Book Review - "Ballplayer" by Chipper Jones

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Earlier this month, Penguin Randomhouse released "BallPlayer", the autobiography of one Larry Wayne Jones; you can purchase your copy here. Given how deeply Chipper is intertwined with the recent history of the Braves, the book is essential reading for both casual and committed fans. I couldn’t put it down, and completed reading it one sitting. Chipper’s transparency and candor in the book cannot be overstated; more than just a re-hashing of facts, he goes quite deep into the story-behind-the-story of a number of significant events from his playing days. I don’t want to be too much of a spoiler for anyone who is either reading the book or plans to read it, so this review will consist of a few short themes and high level personal takeaways.

Steroids: Chipper openly wonders what he could have accomplished had he been willing to go on the juice. Given the era in which Chipper played, this perspective is quite interesting and completely reasonable. However, Chipper places himself firmly in the "Steroids = Cheating" camp. Going beyond a discrete good/bad argument, Chipper also considered the impact that doping would have had on his relationship with his family, specifically his father. Chipper takes the position that cheating would have been a betrayal of all of the effort that his father put into developing him as a baseball player. This is a personal side of the PED argument that I’d not seen articulated by any other players.

Personal: In another example of candor, Chipper lays the facts bare regarding his failed marriages, including a rather blunt explanation for the circumstances surrounding instances of infidelity. It’s clear from the reading that he’s not proud of these things, but they are a part of his story. Chipper also discusses the impact that his behavior had on his parents, and how he felt obligated to drag himself through the mud to save his first marriage. I found these personal anecdotes (and others) to be very humanizing. Chipper is also an only child, which is a bit rare.

Frank Wren: My suspicion is that most people on TC are monitoring both the MLB team as well as the overall organizational health of the Braves, in the form of the quality of the prospects in the minor league system. For all the confidence/hope that we’re now feeling about the Maitan, Albies and Allard-level prospects in the system, I’d imagine that we were all equally (if not more) horrified as we watched the minor league depth get hollowed out under the Frank Wren regime (see Gilmartin, Sean, et al.). Concurrently, there would be articles here and there about how Scout X had left the organization to work for Team B. Of course, the erosion of the minor league base led to Frank Wren’s firing and the rebuild that is currently under way. Chipper illuminates the problem with Frank Wren in a single word: micromanagement. Rather than trusting his people to do their work, Wren had to have his fingers in all of the proverbial pies. The micromanagement and dysfunction was so bad that Bobby Cox had to be talked off of the ledge of quitting as early 2008; keep in mind that Wren had been hired only one year prior. Apparently Bobby and Frank’s relationship was sufficiently toxic such that they couldn’t even be in the same room together. We can argue Bobby’s merits all day long, but one thing we can agree on is that Bobby was and is a central figure in the Braves organization. That things deteriorated so badly, so quickly leads me to wonder why Wren wasn’t fired sooner.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: Chipper mentions all of the usual suspects as being contributors to his success: his father, Bobby Cox, John Schuerholz, etc. However, there is also a long list of minor league coaches to whom Chipper gives a nod, some of which I didn’t know were ever members of the Braves organization. Among them:

Grady Little (yup, THAT Grady Little)

Don Baylor: encouraged demanded Chipper hit for power from both the right and left sides. Apparently Chipper’s initial approach right-handed was to be more of a slap-hitter, get-on-base type of guy.

Frank Howard: Just read page 67. I dare you not to laugh.

So, those are one person’s thoughts. I look forward to a good discussion in the comments section.



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