Keeping Up with Jones

Among New York's baseball fans, who have had little solace since the decline of the Yankees began four years ago, a quiet hysteria was developing last week. Before their unbelieving eyes, the tanglefoot New York Mets were turning into a team of superlatives. As they beat San Diego 5 to 3, at week's end the Mets were riding an eight-game winning streak, longest in their eight-year history. Their 26th victory against only 23 losses raised their percentage to .531, their highest ever.* The streak also propelled the Mets into second place in the National League's Eastern Division, the first time they have been so high in league standings. The one player who gets most of the credit for the Mets' historic performance is Leftfielder-First Baseman Cleon Jones.

Last week the still-unheralded Jones, with a percentage that hovered around the .345 mark, was bunched with three other players in a race for the batting leadership of the National League. In recognition of Jones' fearsome reputation at the plate, opposing pitchers recently walked him three times (twice intentionally) in one game, an honor rarely afforded anemic Met batters.

Out in Front. At 26, Jones is, by Mets' standards, a grizzled veteran. For years, he has been yearning for a .300-plus batting average. His trouble in the past, he believes, stemmed from well-meaning managers who insisted that he pull the ball toward Shea Stadium's beckoning leftfield fences. Cleon dutifully followed their advice until the middle of the 1968 season, when he decided in a fit of frustration to return to his natural swing. He has been hitting better than .300 ever since. "I'm a line-drive hitter," he explains, "and I have to hit the ball where it's pitched. When you swing for the fences, you get out in front of the pitch, and that's what ruined me before."

In addition to being a walking contradiction in terms--a Met slugger --Jones has another proud distinction. He is one of the few players in major-league history to be a righthanded batter and a lefthanded thrower. He came by his aberration honestly, while growing up in Mobile, Ala., the town that also produced Satchel Paige, Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Billy Williams and Met Teammate Tommie Agee. "We played stickball when we were kids," he explains, "and there was this porch on the first-base side. If you hit the ball up there it was lost, and it wasn't easy to get another one. So naturally, when I came up to the plate lefthanded, they made me switch over. That's really how it happened."

To His Head. Although he has become a favorite of New York sportswriters and fans, who are showering him with years of pent-up adulation, Jones has remained modest and unassuming. "I think he has handled all the attention like a real big leaguer," says Mets Manager Gil Hodges. But there is one thing that goes to Jones' head: the barrage of pitches from National League hurlers, who are employing the traditional retaliatory weapon against a hot hitter. Cleon is not intimidated. He sprawls in the dirt, dusts himself off, clutches his bat and plants his feet solidly again--while delirious Met fans dream their impossible dreams.

-*Except for the start of this year and 1966, when 2-1 records gave the Mets a brief but heady percentage of .667.

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