THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140502
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICH RADFORD, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 66 lines
Andruw Jones, the Atlanta Braves' latest phenom, has this professional baseball thing backward. As pitching gets tougher with each progressive level, the batting average has a tendency to fall.
His just keeps rising.
He hit .319 for Class A Durham at the beginning of this year. After a promotion to Double-A Greenville, his average ballooned to .369. Prior to Tuesday's game at Harbor Park, Jones was hitting .381 for the Richmond Braves since being called up two weeks ago.
Combining the three levels this season, Jones has 33 home runs, 30 stolen bases, 90 RBIs and is hitting .339.
And Richmond might not be his last stop of '96. Anyone wanting to see him at the Triple-A level better do it now. The Braves are at Harbor Park to play the Norfolk Tides again tonight, then return on Aug. 31 and Sept. 2.
``Players of that level of ability, with so much natural, God-given excellence, move up at their own pace,'' Atlanta Braves general manager John Schuerholz said two weeks ago in USA Today. ``It's not anything anybody maps out or plans.''
There was a plan when the season began. Jones was to make the jump from Durham to Greenville at the All-Star break and finish the season there. Anything else would have been pushing the luck of a 19-year-old.
But this is no ordinary teenager.
Jones grew up on Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela. The most famous player to come from the island prior to Jones was Hensley Meulens, a former New York Yankee now playing in Japan.
Jones was spotted by Braves regional scout Giovanni Viceisza while playing in a 15-under youth tournament in Puerto Rico. The Braves sent a team of scouts to Curacao to evaluate Jones and signed him as a free agent once he turned 16, the minimum signing age.
After a season in the Gulf Coast League, Jones played for Class A Macon in 1995 and had the type of year from which tall tales sprout. He hit .277 with 41 doubles, 25 home runs, 56 stolen bases and 100 RBIs. Baseball America and USA Today both named him minor league player of the year.
Managers in the South Atlantic League tabbed him the best batting prospect, best power prospect, best baserunner and best defensive outfielder.
Yet he was conspicuously absent from the Braves' major league camp in spring training. And when the Braves would ask for an extra outfielder for a day in the big league camp, Jones was never sent. No need to give the kid a big head.
If Jones is called up to Atlanta in September, or sooner if the Braves want him on their postseason roster, the number of teams he's played for this year will equal the number of languages he speaks. Curacao is one of the Dutch Leeward islands. As Jones explains it, Dutch is spoken in the schools. Papiamento, a Spanish Creole dialect with tints of Dutch and Portuguese, is the island language. And everyone picks up a bit of Spanish and English.
As for an explanation of Jones' explosion onto the scene this season, the 6-foot-1 Jones points to some added muscle - ``I was 178, 179 last season. Now I'm 190.'' - and a greater measure of patience at the plate.
``Last year if a pitcher didn't throw me my pitch, I swung at it anyway,'' Jones said. ``This year, I wanted to make myself into a .300 hitter. I'm more relaxed. I wait for my pitch.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Promoted to the Triple-A Braves two weeks ago, Andruw Jones has a
.378 batting average and five home runs - including one at Harbor
Park on Tuesday. by CNB