As a avid baseball fan I enjoyed getting to take a peak behind the great career of the legendary Chipper Jones. Well written and heartfelt, Jones bear it all for the fan to see.

Ballplayer, Chipper Jones' somewhat-generic entry in the "star athlete memoir" genre, will probably entertain Braves and/or Jones fans but doesn't offer a ton for the casual baseball fan who never performed a Tomahawk Chop. Jones had a long and illustrious career with its fair share of ups and downs, but Ballplayer is hurt by shallow writing and many tired athlete memoir tropes. It has a few positive moments and is overall an average read, but it's hard to strongly recommend the book to the general fan.

The book follows the tried-and-true player memoir format. Jones recounts his early years growing up as the son of a baseball coach in rural Florida and describes some impactful moments from his childhood. We learn that his switch-hitting was encouraged by his Mickey Mantle-idolizing father and how his regret about leaving his local high school for a snootier prep powerhouse in Jacksonville contributed to him staying with the Braves for his entire professional career. The bulk of the book concerns his tenure with the Braves, and gives a chronological overview of his professional career and his experiences on the field and in the clubhouse. Jones offers insight into the personalities of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Bobby Cox, and other Braves staff and also shares some run-ins with other players such as Barry Bonds (unsurprisingly a bit of a jerk to Jones). The broad synopses of each season drag a little bit as many of them blend together but there are a few amusing anecdotes, such as how Jones decided to go deer hunting on the day of his first-ever World Series game. The reader will also pick up some useful nuggets of baseball wisdom along the way, which is probably the best aspect of the book. Jones was a true student of the game (his future certainly lies in some kind of coaching or analyst role assuming he still wants to work) and he also has an astounding memory of his playing history. He shares tidbits such as how the major benefit of becoming a switch-hitter is preventing sliders going away from the batter and that hard-throwing pitchers with better "stuff" outperform more control-based hurlers in colder weather because batters are less warmed-up.

Ballplayer's biggest drawbacks center on Jones' limited writing abilities. On the prose front, Jones isn't particularly strong at describing things and my Kindle counted 6 separate instances of the phrase "shit-eating grin" (and I'm not entirely convinced it captured all of them). Jones simply isn't all that great at articulating his feelings and the writing in general often came off as clunky. Even when dealing with his off-field troubles (Jones got divorced twice and had an affair with a Hooters waitress in 1997 that resulted in a son) Jones' writing reads like a public apology statement. I'm not going to play armchair psychologist and try to understand whether he's truly remorseful or not, but I will play armchair book reviewer and say that these passages weren't interesting or insightful.

In recent years Jones has had some incendiary and foolish tweets, including suggesting the Sandy Hook school shootings were a conspiracy, making tasteless jokes about illegal immigrants, and challenging an army veteran who was angry about being snubbed for an autograph over 15 years ago to a fistfight in an extended and inane stream of threats and insults. That said, his tone isn't absurdly arrogant over the course of Ballplayer and his personality didn't bother me. Jones' peak performance coincided with my formative years and it was nice to relive some of the biggest moments of 90's baseball and read about some of the game's stars during the period, and I appreciated the times Jones shared some of his substantial wisdom about the game. Still, Ballplayer is a typical player memoir, and suffers from the same problems that plague most offerings in the genre. Braves fans will like it, but for the general fan it's just an average read.

5/10

The story of Larry “Chipper” Jones sounds like one that many fictional stories are woven from: a country boy who with the guidance from his parents becomes a big-time star in a big city. While it may sound like something that would be written as fiction, it is very much a true story as Jones reflects on his life in this memoir co-written with Carroll Rogers-Walton.

While Jones does speak about his inspiration and guidance from his parents as a young man, I felt the book was a little different than most sport memoirs in that there is not a lot of space about the athlete’s personal life. There is one chapter and part of another in which Jones speaks about his failed marriage and the infidelity that led to that ending. Much like what he did while a player, he spoke about it in detail once, then let everyone make their judgments and moved on.

How the book does this is that aside from that, Jones mostly talks about baseball, baseball, and more baseball. From his high school and minor league days, to his time with the Braves teams that won 14 consecutive division titles, five National League pennants and one World Series, this book covers nearly everything a fan would want to know about life in the major leagues. Jones is full of praise for the three Hall of Fame pitchers who led the Braves – Tom Glavine, Gregg Maddux and John Smoltz.

For hardcore fans, Jones also talks deep into baseball analysis. Not statistics, but things that happen on the field, such as learning to switch hit, learning different positions on the field (he was a shortstop, third baseman and outfielder, plus he also pitched in high school) and pitch-by-pitch analysis of memorable at bats for Jones. One I particularly enjoyed was one against Roger Clemens when the latter was a member of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Fans of Jones or the Atlanta Braves, the only major league team for which he played, will particularly enjoy this book. Even those who enjoy reading memoirs of baseball players but may not be a fan of either will still want to add this to their libraries.

I wish to thank Penguin Group Dutton for providing an advance review copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review