I KNOW THIS AINT THE SPORTS SECTION BUT JUST WANNA GIVE PROPS TO ADAM JONES, ORIOLES PHENOM OUT OF 4-5 PARK IN DA SOUTHEAST. ANYONE ON HERE EVER GET THE CHANCE TO PLAY WITH HIM OR AGAINST HIM? I REMEMBER PLAYING WITH HELLA FOOLS THAT WENT TO THE MINORS/MAJORS....
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/may/27/1s27jones22143-great-escape/?sports&zIndex=105994
The great escape
Adam Jones survived San Diego's inner city to become one of the majors' rising stars
By Chris Jenkins, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 27, 2009
The Seattle Mariners may long rue a trade that sent San Diego's Adam Jones to the Baltimore Orioles. (Marc Serota / Getty Images) - Usually, it's the other way around. It's the coach who calls the timeout, the coach who tries to alleviate the pressure on the player who's standing in the batter's box with a one-run deficit in the seventh inning of a CIF playoff game, bases loaded and an 0-2 count on him.
It's the coach who wants to reassure the kid that everything's going to be all right. Even if it isn't.
“After strike two went by, Adam called time and came over to me,” said former Morse High baseball coach Matt Cleek, recalling a quarterfinal game against Montgomery in 2003. “That's the kind of kid he was. Quirky. But he also knew what he was doing.”
Adam Jones, then a senior shortstop and pitcher, had stopped the game just to reassure Cleek. With full confidence, Jones informed the coach that he knew what the pitcher would throw next, a slider breaking middle-away. Cleek reminded him not to try to pull it, but to drive it back up the middle, which is precisely how Jones delivered two runs and the 4-3 victory.
“He'd studied that pitcher,” said Cleek, a former San Diego State pitcher who's now helping the Madison baseball program. “He said he could tell when the ball left the hand, see the spin, and know it was a slider on the way. He's the only kid I ever had who could do that. It was like Tony Gwynn, like he had a sixth sense.
“Adam has five tools, yeah. But he also has a mind for baseball.”
Evidently, when Jones gets it in mind to make something happen, it happens. The fact that he's the new sensation of Major League Baseball – a Baltimore Orioles center fielder who's dazzling the star-studded AL East Division and ranking among leaders in several categories – comes as no surprise whatsoever to whoever spent any time with Jones in his youth.
Never mind that there were so many more reasons why he would never make it in professional baseball, starting with the fact that he grew up in one of the tougher sections of San Diego, a neighborhood where baseball was better left to the boys in the 'burbs.
“There are a lot of guys in the majors from San Diego County, a bunch of guys from Poway and Rancho Bernardo, places like that,” said Jones, calling just a few hours before driving a pitch out of Yankee Stadium for his ninth of 10 homers this season. “They don't come from the part I came from. The inner city is totally different.
“People think San Diego is lavish, all about the beach. I know places where you're not supposed to go, the inside parts of San Diego. My scenario's different.”
Difficult, too. For the most part, Jones grew up near 45th and Logan, not far from the Willie Henderson Sports Complex. “Four-Five Park,” locals call it. There are ballfields there, but few baseball players and far fewer with the interest and the opportunity to play the game at a more refined level.
“It wasn't the area or the neighborhood, but the drive and determination to make it,” said Jones. “I knew what my goal was, knew what I had to do to get it, and I went after it. My drive to succeed was so high that I didn't let anything get in the way of it.”
Indeed, his is a remarkable story of fortitude and dedication, but also testimony to what good can occur when family and people from divergent backgrounds take care of each other. It just might not have the impact if not for the impact that Jones, in turn, has had on baseball.
The word “breakthrough” sounds too soft to describe the season Jones is having in this, the second year since the Seattle Mariners grudgingly traded him away in what's fast becoming the worst baseball deal of the decade. He ranks second in the majors behind teammate Brian Roberts in runs scored, sixth in batting average (.359), fourth in slugging percentage (.647) and fifth in OPS (1.064).
“Everything he does is impressive, every day,” said Orioles third baseman Ty Wigginton, a product of Chula Vista High. “I go back to a homer he hit to right-center in spring training in (Port) St. Lucie, probably the loudest crack of the bat I've ever heard. It sounded like it rang forever.”
Jones' talent is such that despite playing on a last-place team in a division where the O's are the only club given no chance of contention in '09, he's garnering considerable national attention.
The only way to slow his eye-popping progress is by injury, and while he missed four games recently with a hamstring strain, Jones immediately tested the hammy by beating out an infield single off CC Sabathia and making a diving catch despite an 8-1 deficit. Speaking of defense, Jones leads all big league outfielders with four assists, his throws giving away the kind of power-pitcher he was at Morse.
Folks in Seattle simply can't bear to watch anymore. The Mariners' decision to use their first-round draft choice (and 37th overall pick) on him, along with a sizable signing bonus, was enough to keep Jones from playing college ball for Gwynn at SDSU. Jones twice was named that organization's Minor League Player of the Year – once as a shortstop, then again as a converted outfielder, though there wasn't room for him in Seattle's outfield.
The M's had their hearts and minds set on one pitcher, though, and were willing to give up eventual All-Star reliever George Sherrill and three promising minor league pitchers to get Baltimore lefty Erik Bedard. Before parting with Bedard, however, the Orioles insisted on getting Jones as well.
“It's given me the opportunity to play every single day, which I didn't get with Seattle, and I understand why,” Jones said. “There's comfort in knowing I can just go out and do my thing, knowing I'm in there, doing the best I can. I'm not on the bench, getting frustrated because I'm not playing. I relish this.”
Along the way, Jones came under the wing of a former infielder who'd also played for the Mariners and Orioles. Not only did Mark McLemore grow up in pretty much the same neighborhood as Jones, but they'd had the same high school English teacher, even though McLemore attended Morse 20 years earlier.
Before Jones, the only Morse player ever chosen in MLB's first round was slugger Sam Horn, who was McLemore's teammate in 1982 and also played for Baltimore.
For decades between, Morse was a school known as a hotbed of football and track, and it was basketball that first obsessed Jones. Not giving baseball a go until he was almost a teenager, Jones showed enough skill right away that a friend took him outside the neighborhood for practice with a travel team.
“What it was about baseball that hooked him is something I've never been able to explain,” said Anson Wright, an older half-brother and group counselor. “A lot of kids in the inner city are intrigued by football and basketball, and in inner-city San Diego, football seemed the sport where guys were making it. But baseball brought out his passion. He just loved the game.
“There's something else about baseball. If you're good at it, people look out for you and will help you get to the next level. Adam had a lot of people help him along the way.”
The first time he pitched for the Redwings travel team, Jones' catcher was Jett Ruiz, and the two grew extremely close. Jones was virtually adopted by Ruiz's parents, Steve and Debbie, who provided the means by which he could play tournaments in Arizona and all over Southern California. Jones had a second home at the Ruizes, who lived in rural Lakeside, which is about as different from Lincoln Park as it gets in San Diego County.
“First time I went to the Ruizes' house, I damn near had to have a talk with Adam, tell him he had to be careful way out there,” said Wright, chuckling. “They were, like, out in the woods. But that just goes to show you: I think baseball attracts good people. You don't see a lot of bad kids playing baseball. They just don't migrate to baseball.
“Adam was so book-smart, so smart in the head, that he couldn't even grasp why things were the way they were in the streets in his own neighborhood. The area where he grew up was crime-infested, drug-infested, but to him, those streets were never an option.”
Wright saw to it. Before his senior year, Jones moved into a Spring Valley apartment with Wright. If he needed money for prom or incidentals, Jones went to wealthier neighborhoods and sold candy door-to-door, which is how he'd paid for his first baseball glove at the age of 12.
By playing baseball, Jones has been able to buy a home for his single mother, Andrea. Like an enormous number of major leaguers, he's set up residence in the Phoenix area, where Wright also lives now.
“I could've gone another way,” said Jones. “I knew right from wrong. I didn't want to ruin the future I had as far as sports and school. There definitely were a couple guys I grew up with who got caught up in 'situations.'I just knew I had the opportunity of a lifetime and I had people looking out for me.
“Mine was a shot in the dark. I know how quick I can lose it, how quickly it can go away. I'm determined not to let it.”
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/may/27/1s27jones22143-great-escape/?sports&zIndex=105994
The great escape
Adam Jones survived San Diego's inner city to become one of the majors' rising stars
By Chris Jenkins, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 27, 2009
The Seattle Mariners may long rue a trade that sent San Diego's Adam Jones to the Baltimore Orioles. (Marc Serota / Getty Images) - Usually, it's the other way around. It's the coach who calls the timeout, the coach who tries to alleviate the pressure on the player who's standing in the batter's box with a one-run deficit in the seventh inning of a CIF playoff game, bases loaded and an 0-2 count on him.
It's the coach who wants to reassure the kid that everything's going to be all right. Even if it isn't.
“After strike two went by, Adam called time and came over to me,” said former Morse High baseball coach Matt Cleek, recalling a quarterfinal game against Montgomery in 2003. “That's the kind of kid he was. Quirky. But he also knew what he was doing.”
Adam Jones, then a senior shortstop and pitcher, had stopped the game just to reassure Cleek. With full confidence, Jones informed the coach that he knew what the pitcher would throw next, a slider breaking middle-away. Cleek reminded him not to try to pull it, but to drive it back up the middle, which is precisely how Jones delivered two runs and the 4-3 victory.
“He'd studied that pitcher,” said Cleek, a former San Diego State pitcher who's now helping the Madison baseball program. “He said he could tell when the ball left the hand, see the spin, and know it was a slider on the way. He's the only kid I ever had who could do that. It was like Tony Gwynn, like he had a sixth sense.
“Adam has five tools, yeah. But he also has a mind for baseball.”
Evidently, when Jones gets it in mind to make something happen, it happens. The fact that he's the new sensation of Major League Baseball – a Baltimore Orioles center fielder who's dazzling the star-studded AL East Division and ranking among leaders in several categories – comes as no surprise whatsoever to whoever spent any time with Jones in his youth.
Never mind that there were so many more reasons why he would never make it in professional baseball, starting with the fact that he grew up in one of the tougher sections of San Diego, a neighborhood where baseball was better left to the boys in the 'burbs.
“There are a lot of guys in the majors from San Diego County, a bunch of guys from Poway and Rancho Bernardo, places like that,” said Jones, calling just a few hours before driving a pitch out of Yankee Stadium for his ninth of 10 homers this season. “They don't come from the part I came from. The inner city is totally different.
“People think San Diego is lavish, all about the beach. I know places where you're not supposed to go, the inside parts of San Diego. My scenario's different.”
Difficult, too. For the most part, Jones grew up near 45th and Logan, not far from the Willie Henderson Sports Complex. “Four-Five Park,” locals call it. There are ballfields there, but few baseball players and far fewer with the interest and the opportunity to play the game at a more refined level.
“It wasn't the area or the neighborhood, but the drive and determination to make it,” said Jones. “I knew what my goal was, knew what I had to do to get it, and I went after it. My drive to succeed was so high that I didn't let anything get in the way of it.”
Indeed, his is a remarkable story of fortitude and dedication, but also testimony to what good can occur when family and people from divergent backgrounds take care of each other. It just might not have the impact if not for the impact that Jones, in turn, has had on baseball.
The word “breakthrough” sounds too soft to describe the season Jones is having in this, the second year since the Seattle Mariners grudgingly traded him away in what's fast becoming the worst baseball deal of the decade. He ranks second in the majors behind teammate Brian Roberts in runs scored, sixth in batting average (.359), fourth in slugging percentage (.647) and fifth in OPS (1.064).
“Everything he does is impressive, every day,” said Orioles third baseman Ty Wigginton, a product of Chula Vista High. “I go back to a homer he hit to right-center in spring training in (Port) St. Lucie, probably the loudest crack of the bat I've ever heard. It sounded like it rang forever.”
Jones' talent is such that despite playing on a last-place team in a division where the O's are the only club given no chance of contention in '09, he's garnering considerable national attention.
The only way to slow his eye-popping progress is by injury, and while he missed four games recently with a hamstring strain, Jones immediately tested the hammy by beating out an infield single off CC Sabathia and making a diving catch despite an 8-1 deficit. Speaking of defense, Jones leads all big league outfielders with four assists, his throws giving away the kind of power-pitcher he was at Morse.
Folks in Seattle simply can't bear to watch anymore. The Mariners' decision to use their first-round draft choice (and 37th overall pick) on him, along with a sizable signing bonus, was enough to keep Jones from playing college ball for Gwynn at SDSU. Jones twice was named that organization's Minor League Player of the Year – once as a shortstop, then again as a converted outfielder, though there wasn't room for him in Seattle's outfield.
The M's had their hearts and minds set on one pitcher, though, and were willing to give up eventual All-Star reliever George Sherrill and three promising minor league pitchers to get Baltimore lefty Erik Bedard. Before parting with Bedard, however, the Orioles insisted on getting Jones as well.
“It's given me the opportunity to play every single day, which I didn't get with Seattle, and I understand why,” Jones said. “There's comfort in knowing I can just go out and do my thing, knowing I'm in there, doing the best I can. I'm not on the bench, getting frustrated because I'm not playing. I relish this.”
Along the way, Jones came under the wing of a former infielder who'd also played for the Mariners and Orioles. Not only did Mark McLemore grow up in pretty much the same neighborhood as Jones, but they'd had the same high school English teacher, even though McLemore attended Morse 20 years earlier.
Before Jones, the only Morse player ever chosen in MLB's first round was slugger Sam Horn, who was McLemore's teammate in 1982 and also played for Baltimore.
For decades between, Morse was a school known as a hotbed of football and track, and it was basketball that first obsessed Jones. Not giving baseball a go until he was almost a teenager, Jones showed enough skill right away that a friend took him outside the neighborhood for practice with a travel team.
“What it was about baseball that hooked him is something I've never been able to explain,” said Anson Wright, an older half-brother and group counselor. “A lot of kids in the inner city are intrigued by football and basketball, and in inner-city San Diego, football seemed the sport where guys were making it. But baseball brought out his passion. He just loved the game.
“There's something else about baseball. If you're good at it, people look out for you and will help you get to the next level. Adam had a lot of people help him along the way.”
The first time he pitched for the Redwings travel team, Jones' catcher was Jett Ruiz, and the two grew extremely close. Jones was virtually adopted by Ruiz's parents, Steve and Debbie, who provided the means by which he could play tournaments in Arizona and all over Southern California. Jones had a second home at the Ruizes, who lived in rural Lakeside, which is about as different from Lincoln Park as it gets in San Diego County.
“First time I went to the Ruizes' house, I damn near had to have a talk with Adam, tell him he had to be careful way out there,” said Wright, chuckling. “They were, like, out in the woods. But that just goes to show you: I think baseball attracts good people. You don't see a lot of bad kids playing baseball. They just don't migrate to baseball.
“Adam was so book-smart, so smart in the head, that he couldn't even grasp why things were the way they were in the streets in his own neighborhood. The area where he grew up was crime-infested, drug-infested, but to him, those streets were never an option.”
Wright saw to it. Before his senior year, Jones moved into a Spring Valley apartment with Wright. If he needed money for prom or incidentals, Jones went to wealthier neighborhoods and sold candy door-to-door, which is how he'd paid for his first baseball glove at the age of 12.
By playing baseball, Jones has been able to buy a home for his single mother, Andrea. Like an enormous number of major leaguers, he's set up residence in the Phoenix area, where Wright also lives now.
“I could've gone another way,” said Jones. “I knew right from wrong. I didn't want to ruin the future I had as far as sports and school. There definitely were a couple guys I grew up with who got caught up in 'situations.'I just knew I had the opportunity of a lifetime and I had people looking out for me.
“Mine was a shot in the dark. I know how quick I can lose it, how quickly it can go away. I'm determined not to let it.”
