He had a pretty good career, too.
Coming Home: My Amazinâ Life with the New York Mets (Triumph Books; hardback; $30; 239 pages) is a collaborative effort with Jones, who turned 80 this year, and Gary Kaschak, a veteran sportswriter and columnist with more than four decades of experience.
During his 13-year career in the majors â 12 with the Mets â Jones compiled a .281 lifetime batting average and hit over .300 twice, reaching his peak with a .340 mark in 1969.
Two things I hoped would be addressed in this book were covered thoroughly. To my delight, Jones leads off his book recalling the final out of the 1969 World Series. Jones caught a deep fly ball in left field hit by Baltimoreâs Davey Johnson to complete the Metsâ âamazinââ world championship season. Jones caught the ball and genuflected (some say kneeled, including Jones, but my Catholic upbringing suggested a more reverent gesture).
âIt was a sigh of relief and it was a moment of gratitude,â Jones writes.
Amen to that. It was a spontaneous reaction to a season that had an improbable script.
The second landmark moment Jones addressed from that 1969 season was the July 30 game at Shea Stadium, when Mets manager Gil Hodges slowly walked out to left field after Johnny Edwards doubled down the line and removed Jones from the game.
Reports at the time suggested that Jones loafed after the ball, and that was the reason Hodges yanked him from the game. More recent reporting noted that the outfield grass was slick and puddled from rain, and Jones, nursing an injured ankle, did not want to risk further injury.
Jones sets the record straight.
âLook down at what weâre standing in,â Jones said he told Hodges, who noticed that their feet were under water.
Both agreed that it was a good idea for Jones to leave the game, but reporters believed Hodges was trying to send a message.
Jones agrees but adds that the message was not limited to him.
âI didnât think for one second Gil was trying to embarrass me, but thatâs what they (reporters) were asking,â Jones writes. âI thought he was trying to make a statement, not to me, but to the team.â
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It was a wakeup call for Jones and his teammates. The rest, as they say, was history.
Jones writes about his childhood spent living in the Africatown section of Mobile, where a teacher and his grandmother were the biggest influences during his youth. His parents were basically out of the picture, but Jones writes that home âwas always the driving force.â
âPeople say Cleon Jones made Africatown,â Jones writes. âNo. Africatown made Cleon Jones.â
Jones was a four-sport star in high school and was doing well at Alabama A&M when he was seriously injured when a car hit the vehicle he was sitting in and sent him through the windshield. After recovering, Jones decided to stay with one sport, choosing baseball.
Jones writes about the racism he encountered as an up-and-coming player in the Metsâ minor league system. He recalls an incident while playing for Auburn in the New York-Penn League and needed surgery due to painful hemorrhoids and told his manager as much.
âI could hardly walk, let alone play ball,â Jones wrote.
His manager âignored what I had to say and put me in the lineup anyway.â
Curiously, Jones does not name the manager, but the Auburn team in 1963 was piloted by Dick Cole, who led the team to a first-place finish. Jones batted .360 at Auburn that year, going 18-for-50. Later that season he went to Raleigh in the Carolina League and batted .305.
I am not sure if this incident was necessarily racism or the case of a stubborn manager who did not want a player to dictate when he could play; I have no context and I certainly was not there. Certainly, Jones saw it as racism, suggesting that white players with lesser injuries were afforded more sympathy. I am not going to question his perceptions or his sincerity.
âI donât know everything he said (to the Mets front office officials) even up to this day, only that he said some things that he didnât need to say, like I was lazy and selfish,â Jones writes.
A more blatant display of racism occurred while Jones played for Raleigh in 1963, and he took a bold stand. His wife-to-be and future mother-in-law came to a game they were told they would have to sit in the segregated section down the left-field line. Jones refused to play unless they were allowed to sit behind home plate, and Raleighâs general manager stepped in and made it happen.
Jones also recalls a 1964 incident in Jacksonville, Florida, while he was playing for Buffalo in the International League. A restaurant owner refused to serve Buffaloâs Black players but reluctantly capitulated after police told him his discrimination was against the law. But when a waitress refused to serve the players the next night, the manager fired her. She returned the next night and apologized to the players.
The woman eventually became a friend and a fan to all of the players, even attending some of the games.
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âIt felt real good that a situation like that could take a new course,â Jones writes. âWeâd made a friend.â
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The schooner lost for years in the Mobile River, was finally found in 2019. The wreck site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in November 2021.
âWhen I first found out it was true, I did a little dance,â Jones writes.
Coming Home is not just about social issues, although it plays a strong and necessary role. There is plenty of baseball, too. Mets fans from the 1960s â and even baseball fans who enjoy reading about that era â will enjoy Jonesâ keen impressions and stories about players like Ken Boyer, Warren Spahn, Ralph Terry, Al Jackson, Tommie Agee, Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson and Tommy Davis. The Mets, lovable losers when they debuted in 1962, slowly evolved into a strong baseball team, and by 1969 had put together a squad that had a memorable, magical season.
Jones touches on many subjects in his autobiography and presents keen snapshots of the players and managers he interacted with. Casey Stengel âhad a great mind for the game.â
Hodges âset the tone for a new Mets attitudeâ during the teamâs first meeting in 1968. His calm presence and philosophy earned the playersâ respect, and they responded. It is clear that Jones respected Hodges and was devastated when the Mets manager died of a heart attack in early 1972.
And of course, there is lots of play-by-play and insight from Jones, who provides a locker-room view of the 1969 World Series and the âYa Gotta Believeâ season of 1973.
He also provides perspective on the "shoe polish" incident in Game 5 of the World Series. Jones claimed he was hit on the shoe by a Dave McNally pitch, and Hodges brought the baseball to the attention of umpire Lou DiMuro, who awarded Jones first base.
Shades of Nippy Jones for the Milwaukee Braves in the 1957 World Series. And the ball clearly caromed off Jones' foot.
âDonât get me wrong. Yogi was a decent person,â Jones writes. âHe just didnât understand the gravity of the situation.
âAnd I revered his friendship, but I didnât think he did a good job with that.â
Jones later notes that Berra âwas a good person and good for baseball, but certain managerâs instincts he didnât possess.â
Jones also addresses the van incident earlier in 1975, when the outfielder remained in Florida to rehabilitate and was accused of indecent exposure on May 4. Police found him in a van with a woman, but Jones was never prosecuted. He later issued an apology to the New York media at a news conference.
âThe next morning all I heard was that I was naked in a van, having sex with a young white girl,â Jones writes. âNaked! In a van! Never happened then, never would in the future.â
Jones called the incident and the media coverage that followed it âa hurtful lie that would never go away no matter how long or how hard I maintained it as gospel truth.â
Jones signed with the Chicago White Sox in 1976 but only got into 12 games before he was released four weeks into the season. He later became an instructor for the Mets during the 1980s, working with future major leaguers like Lenny Dykstra, Kevin Mitchell and Mike Fitzgerald.
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Jones, who would be inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame in 1991, returned to his Alabama roots. His nonprofit Last Out Community Foundation is helping revitalize the Africatown area by fixing and building affordable homes while providing programs for youths.
If there is a flaw in this book, it is due to some bad editing in places. The names of Monte Irvin, Dick Ricketts and Jake Peavy are misspelled, for example (as Irving, Rickets and Peavey), and there are some grammatical flubs that should have been caught by the bookâs copy editors. âRegimentâ when the proper word was âregimen,â for example.
Those glitches do not diminish the importance of what Cleon Jones has to say. He celebrates with the knowledge that while he will not be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he still made a difference in the community he calls home.
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And thatâs joyous.