Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 25, 1993 TAG: 9307250042
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Jones would be delighted to discuss macroeconomic policy with you.
The assembly of the ideal stock portfolio is another topic that Jones will bat back and forth with relish.
Commodities? Not exactly Jones' realm of expertise, but he is from a rich agricultural state and went to college in a city where vast fortunes are made and lost in the pits down at the local Board of Trade. If you ask politely, he probably won't hesitate to share what he knows.
It isn't all high finance for Jones, either. He also has some pedestrian pursuits such as working the crossword puzzle in the daily paper. He's tamed quite a few of those mind benders.
"I do them because I figure I might learn something," he said.
Jones has another talent just as esoteric as options trading and short sales. He knows how to get guys out.
A right-handed pitcher by trade, Jones works in Salem now. With all due respect to the Bucs, he'd really rather not. Jones started the season at Class AA Carolina. But before long, he was so screwed up they sent him back to Salem (he went 4-5 with a 3.71 earned run average here last year) so he could get both his oars back in the water.
"More than anything, I was playing with my mechanics, changing them around," he said. "It got to the point where I didn't know where the ball was going."
And back to Salem he came.
"They told me they wanted me to get some more innings in," he said. "Still, it's a demotion. It's hard. But it doesn't do any good to sulk."
Instead, Jones is giving others cause to be bummed. In five starts, he has gone 3-1 with a 4.55 ERA and 27 strikeouts and only eight walks in 29 2/3 innings. An 8-3 victory over Kinston on June 20 was his finest outing so far. He yielded two earned runs in seven innings.
"I think I've pitched a lot better since I've been here," he said. "But this league isn't even close to AA in talent. It's a lot easier to see hitters' weaknesses here."
Observing, thinking, analyzing - this is stuff Jones has shown an aptitude for. A pretty good high school student back in Centerville, Iowa, Jones got a baseball offer from Northwestern University, a terrific academic institution. That was great for him because he wanted to go to a good school to begin with, baseball or no baseball.
Jones pitched to college batters well enough to be taken as the Pittsburgh Pirates' third selection in the 1991 amateur draft. Since signing, he's gone back to college to work on his degree in his spare time and he's only four classes short of a degree in economics. Once he gets baseball out of his system, he reckons he'd like to do something like be a portfolio manager for an equity mutual fund.
All of which sets him a little apart from the cuss-a-blue-streak tobacco-juice-stain-on-the-shirt variety of ballplayer.
"That's one of the things I've liked especially about baseball," he said. "You get people from all over and from all walks of life. I've met some of the smartest people I've known and some of the dumbest. And they all come together to make a team."
Seeing the big picture like that ought to help him down the line. So should some of his other skills. For example, if he ever makes it to the big leagues, he won't have a problem figuring out how to handle all that money.
\ PHLASHY PHIL: When Derek Stingley told his parents he was going to pursue baseball full time, he sensed a certain disappointment from his father.
Considering what Darryl Stingley endured and continues to endure from his football playing days, it may come as a faint surprise that he was a little sad when his kid gave up football.
Darryl Stingley is the guy who was paralyzed after a ferocious tackle from Jack Tatum in a professional football game a few years back.
Derek, a center fielder for the Martinsville Phillies and perhaps the swiftest player in the Philadelphia chain, understands how it goes with his father.
"You want to see your kid follow in what you do," he said. "I could see the day that I have a son and he plays baseball and basketball and he decides to quit baseball for basketball. I'd go, `Basketball?'
"But I'd back him all the way, just like my father is backing me."
Derek Stingley started out as a baseball and football player, attending his father's alma mater, Purdue, to play both sports. But things didn't work out at Purdue and Stingley followed his heart to junior college and baseball.
That's where the Phillies found him. So far at Martinsville, he's hitting .260 with 25 runs scored and 17 steals in 28 games. Most of the time, he's the leadoff man and center fielder.
He's a good player - perhaps the best all-around talent on a bad team - and a fine athlete. The guy can scoot, too - 3.6 seconds home to first on a bunt and a 4.3 40, if he were still running that made-for-football distance.
\ OH YEAH, HERE'S THE BALL: Mike Williams, the right-hander from Newport recently called up to the Philadelphia Phillies, found out this week about an hour before game time that he was going to be pitching against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ben Rivera was hurting and the Phils needed a replacement hurler.
Nice notice, right?
"Actually, I thought it was good," Williams told one of the Philly newspapers.
He remembered his first big league start last summer. It didn't go particularly well.
"I had four days to think about it," he said. "I thought about it so much, I got so worked up, so tense, so nervous that I lost a lot of my velocity. I was in awe of everything, the names, stuff like that. You watch them play on TV. You read about them in the paper. And now you're 60 feet, 6 inches away from them."
\ SHORT HOPS: Billy Wagner, the first-round draft choice out of Ferrum, hasn't pitched a lick for the Auburn Astros of the New York-Penn League yet. Wagner pulled something in his left elbow while throwing in the bullpen and was immediately put on the slow track. He'll have his first pro start at home July 30 against the Utica Blue Sox. . . . Third baseman Scott Rolen, Philadelphia's second-round draft choice, signed this week and was assigned to Martinsville. An 18-year-old right-handed hitter, he hit .547 with 36 runs scored and 35 RBI this year.
For an idea of the inflation in minor league franchise values, Jerome Mileur bought what is now the Class AA Harrisburg Senators for $85,000 in 1987 and is closing on the sale of the club in the next couple of weeks for $3 million. Nice payday for a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts.
by CNB