For the Love of the Game...and Chipper.

When you picture Chipper Jones in your mind, you don't picture the showboat dancing around the bases after a game winning home run.  You don't picture the flashy fielder who's nightly quest is to make the ESPN highlight reel.  You don't picture the guy who mindlessly spat out cliches in interviews and press conferences.  No, none of those things were...are...were, Chipper Jones.

Chipper trotted around the bases after a dinger, generally just looking down at the dusty dirt path in front of him.  Chipper made the flashy plays look easy, every time he barehanded a ball dribbling of the end of a bat and snapped a dart-like throw to first base.  Chipper was defiant in front of the microphone...challenging umpires, Bud Selig, detractors and anyone else who wanted a piece of his mind.  Those are the things that were...are...were, Chipper Jones

If you are a fan of a sport - any sport - and you get to witness the entire career of your favorite player, you are pretty lucky.  When that player is arguably the greatest player in that team's history, you just hit the daily double.  But when that same player is also a lock as a first ballot hall of famer, well you just hit the big money ball too.   When Braves third baseman Chipper Jones announced yesterday that he was retiring, I felt just that lucky.

I've seen some great Braves come and go...from the start of their career to the finish.  Royster, Horner, Murphy, Smoltz, Glavine, I could go on and on.  But there was something different about hearing Chipper Jones say that he was ready to call it a career.  It all has to do with loyalty and pride.  Chipper has played for 23 years - twenty...three...years - with just one organization.  He was drafted as a Brave, came up through the minors as a Brave, and played his entire big league career as a Brave.  No hold-outs.  No bartering or flirting with other teams to get a better deal.  Even going as far as to restructuring his own contract and taking less money so that the team could sign other players.

For the love of the game.

It's going to be hard not seeing this at Turner Field

He played third base, shortstop, left field (quite uncomfortably I might add), and did anything that was necessary to help the Braves win.  He spent his entire career batting in the middle of the batting order, being the guy that pitchers pitched around in many cases to get to other hitters.  He unselfishly declined to go to the 2011 All-Star game so that he could heal his right knee.

For the love of the game. 

Chipper never minced words when speaking to the press.  He told the good, and the bad, just the way he saw it.  He didn't concern himself with fines, or losing friends in the press corps, or saying what he thought fans wanted to hear.  He was brutally honest, even with his teammates. In a locker room that had a reputation for being low-key and uninteresting, Chipper brought some zing.

For the love of the game.

I asked fans to send me some of their favorite Chipper Jones memories and stories.  Without a doubt, there was one thing that stood out in all the responses I received.   People just loved to watch Chipper "play the game".  Yes, there was this home run, and that great play, and so on and so forth.  But the main message that was conveyed from these fans is that just watching him play - play with joy, with a smile, with intensity, and with a big chaw in his mouth - is what fans loved the most.  Because he just played.

For the love of the game.

Now we get to spend one final season - a grand farewell tour for maybe the grandest good ol' boy of them all - watching Chipper play.  The body isn't as resilient as it was 19 years ago.   The eyes might be a little more blurry and a little less focused than those bright searing eyes we first saw in 1995.  The temper is probably a little more mailable than it was when he first brought attention to himself in the minors by getting into a brawl with future major league stars Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome.  But it's still Chipper.  It's our Chipper, and it's never been anyone else's.  We get to watch him wave his cap one final time.

For the love of Chipper

I'll say it again - Twenty...Three...Years - a Brave.  To many fans, he is the Braves.  I'm ok with that. I'm ok with saying that Chipper is everything we could ever want a Brave to be, and then some.  Hashbrowns scattered, smothered and covered all around boys!  Larry Wayne is hanging up the cleats! 

“I’m a Southern kid. I wanted to play in a Southern town where I felt comfortable, and I felt comfortable from day one in the Braves organization. … I bleed red, white and blue.” - Chipper Jones: March 22, 2012