Ballplayer

Jones, one of the best switch hitters in Major League Baseball history, who spent his entire 23-year career with the Atlanta Braves, offers an insider’s look into professional baseball. In this sold memoir, cowritten with Walton, a sportswriter who covered the Braves for nearly 20 years, Jones, with the same tenacity and candor in which he played the game, takes readers into the backyard of his boyhood home in Pierson, Fla., where he and his father (a varsity high school baseball coach) simulated games they watched on TV. He recounts what it was like to have three dozen Major League scouts attend his practices and games while at the Bolles School, a private boarding institution in Jacksonville, Fla., and recalls the day he became the top overall pick in baseball’s 1990 draft. The Braves won the 1995 World Series and made the postseason every year for the next decade. But the era was plagued by rampant steroids use, and Jones—who, though tempted, claims he never touched the stuff—writes openly yet carefully about Barry Bonds, Roger Clemons, and other tainted players. He also chronicles how his first two marriages crumbled (and accepts his share of the blame), and takes readers into the batter’s box for some of his most memorable at-bats. (Mar.)