ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250029
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
SALEM'S POOKIE JONES, who once played quarterback for Kentucky, has put his heart and soul into baseball.
Pookie Jones missed football to the depths of his bomb-hurling linebacker-dodging play-faking soul. Then his shoulder started hurting.
Jones' affinity for football declined with each subsequent twinge.
All that served to remind him that his future was in a sport where the ball was small and spherical.
``I used to miss football a lot,'' said the Salem Avalanche left fielder. ``Not anymore.''
Pookie, known on his birth certificate as Robert Elton Jones, Jr., never was busted up in football like he was in baseball. Torn cartilage in his right shoulder was surgically repaired in March 1995, thus throwing a major delay into his hoped-for progress through the Colorado Rockies organization to the big leagues.
Jones played only 16 games at Class A Salem last year and was deployed mostly as a pinch runner, a capacity in which he scored nine runs.
As players reduced to such limited roles go, Jones was hard to beat. In short, he is a player who can chew up some base path.
The Jones wheels were on display throughout his college football career at the University of Kentucky. After becoming the first ``Mr. Kentucky Football'' to sign with the football impoverished Wildcats, Jones in three years there as a multi-skilled quarterback established a school record with 1,729 total yards during the 1992 season. By the time he signed with the Rockies in 1994 after being drafted in the 14th round, he already had worked his up to eighth on the all-time Wildcats list with 2,954 total yards, 2,388 of that coming through the air.
Jones opted for baseball after his junior year in college.
``I hadn't played that much baseball when I signed with the Rockies,'' he said. ``My first love had been football.''
Nevertheless, he drove a hard bargain when being recruited out of Calloway County (Ky.) High. He wanted to play both football and baseball in college. After sifting through offers that included Nebraska, Memphis State, and Louisville, he chose the Wildcats.
``He only made one mistake: He didn't sign with Nebraska,'' said Avalanche manager Bill McGuire, a Cornhusker alumnus.
Actually, Kentucky was one of the few schools that would even go along with the two-sport plans. In the football-crazed precincts of the Southeastern Conference, finding a football coach who would share a player's spring practice time with baseball is not easily done. Jones found one 'Cats coach Bill Curry.
``It wasn't hard for me to let him play both at all,'' Curry said. ``The alternative was not having him at all.''
Jones was redshirted in both football and baseball. In his first two years of college baseball, he hit 14 home runs and batted in 60.
Jones is the son of Tennessee Valley Authority advertising man Robert Jones, Sr., and elementary school teacher Betty Jones. His father played college football at Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Later, he played around with his son's name.
``He was the one who first started calling me `Pookie,''' Robert, Jr., said. ``He used to call me `Robbie.' Pookie was just something he came up with later so people could tell us apart.''
After hitting over .300 at every stop in the Rockies chain up to Salem, Jones went into a slump that he only now is showing signs of snapping out of. He hit .208 (11 of 53) last year at Salem and followed that by going 4-for-47 to start this season.
``He had hit very well in spring training, too,'' McGuire said. ``He had been working out a lot with our AAA club and there were a lot of people in AAA and AA who he impressed.''
Once past the Salem city limits, Jones' bat went belly up for a while.
``It's been tough,'' he said. ``I think somebody is trying to see how much I want to play this game.''
Jones rebounded and was batting close to .300 in a recent streak in which he had hit in eight of nine games.
Through the trials and tribulations, he has maintained a reputation for good humor and manners. He stunned a recent a clubhouse inquisitor by thanking him for interviewing him.
``That's just the way he is,'' Curry said. ``He's got everything you look for in a great young man.''
A package that may soon include a smoking bat to go along with the hot wheels.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Pookie Jones gets ready to steal thirdby CNBbase against Kinston on Monday at Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium.
The left fielder batted close to .300 in a recent streak in which he
hit in eight of nine games. color.