Ballplayer by Chipper Jones

Author:Chipper Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-17T15:54:50+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Leading a Double Life

The 1995 season had changed my life. I went from being a rookie with a lot of promise to a celebrity.

The combination of playing on TBS and winning the World Series brought us a crazy amount of attention, both locally and across the country. I didn’t pay for a meal or a drink for a long time. When you walked into a restaurant or supermarket, everybody knew who you were. It was fun, hearing the whispers, “That’s Chipper Jones,” and having people come up and ask me for autographs. I ate it up.

I tried to go to the mall to Christmas shop that winter and got crushed. Just trying to do a little window shopping made me feel like a new panda at the Atlanta zoo. People followed me, wanting to take pictures. I had to sign autographs on the go. If I stopped, I got trapped. After that day, I learned to shop online.

Karin was very protective. She never left my side. She wanted everybody to know that I was taken and by whom.

She went to almost every home game, and quite a few on the road. Every appearance I had, she was there. Every picture I took, she was in it. It was like I was ten or twelve years old and she was the doting mother. At first I had no problem with it—we were in love—but then the honeymoon phase wore off and I needed some space.

We got into a fight one time over a picture in the paper. We’d been at a function and got our picture taken together. The next day in the paper, she had been cut out. You could see her hand through my arm and that was it, and she was pissed.

“So your picture wasn’t in the paper,” I said. “Big deal.”

My comment started a fight, and that’s when I realized just how much her identity was wrapped up in being Mrs. Chipper Jones.

We struggled with the attention baseball brought me and the money. Both of us did. Ultimately, I think Karin wanted our lives to head in one direction, and I wanted my life to head in another. I felt like she was trying to change me little by little.

Karin wanted me to be social. She wanted me to get dressed up and go to black-tie events and hobnob with high-society people. That’s not me. I’ve always been the same guy at heart. I’m a pretty simple country boy. I loved my career and playing baseball, but in the offseason I loved to hang out with my buddies, play golf, and go hunting. I love spending time with my family around the holidays. That has never ever changed. That is the crux of who I am.

We were left with two strong personalities that clashed. We fought like cats and dogs the whole offseason after the 1996 World Series. And for the first time in five years of marriage, I went to spring training in ’97 without her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.