Chipper Jones's Wide-Ranging Legacy - NYTimes.com ATLANTA - While reporting Sunday's feature on Chipper Jones, his final season and his legacy in Atlanta, I thought of something that hadn't occurred to me before: of all the players picked No. 1 over all, Jones worked out the best. That is not to say Jones is the best player ever chosen first. Roger Jongewaard, the former Seattle scouting guru, snagged the two best, taking Ken Griffey Jr. in 1987 and Alex Rodriguez in 1993. Both players rose to superstardom in Seattle, but neither won a championship for the Mariners and both left town while still elite players. Remarkably, since the inception of the draft in 1965, Jones is one of only four top picks to win a World Series with his original club. The others are the Mets" Darryl Strawberry, the Angels" Darin Erstad and the Phillies" Pat Burrell. None of those players are going to the Hall of Fame, while Jones is likely to be enshrined as soon as he is eligible, in 2018. "We'll miss the guy, because he has been the face of this franchise," said the Braves" president, John Schuerholz. Fans will miss him terribly. He's been everything you could hope to get out of a player who is "the guy" for your team to give you. He's given it to us. And he's given it to the fans. Jones actually predates Schuerholz in the Braves" organization by a few months. Bobby Cox was the general manager who authorized the Braves to take Jones first in 1990, a year before he took over as manager, with Schuerholz as the G.M. Pitcher Todd Van Poppel was the other prominent amateur that year, but Schuerholz said Cox had told him that Jones, then a Jacksonville high schooler, was his choice all along. Jones, 40, will leave behind a legacy of greatly increased popularity of youth baseball in Georgia. He is not alone in this - the Braves played in their first two Atlanta World Series before his major league debut - but Jones has been part of the organization since the Braves were the worst team in the majors, in 1990. "You grow up here, and this is a baseball town," said Brian McCann, a local product and six-time All-Star catcher. You look up there and you see all those banners, I was growing up during all that. I'm 10, 11, 12 years old, this team was doing what they're doing, and Chipper was the man. I think he had a big part in baseball around here being so popular. Jones will also be remembered in the small handful of greatest switch-hitters of all-time, with Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose, Eddie Murray and others. Incredibly, his career average is almost identical from either side of the plate: .305 right-handed, .304 left-handed. "To be honest with you, if he asks me a question, I'll answer it, but short of that, I'm not telling Chipper Jones anything," said the Braves" hitting coach, Greg Walker. If he wanted to, he could turn around and be a hitting coach today. He knows that much about hitting, and he's got a unique ability to have a feel for what guys are trying to do to him. Jones has no plans to take Walker's job anytime soon. He has four boys and plans to spend more time with them in retirement. Before then, of course, he will try to help the Braves reach the postseason, and, if they do, reach the World Series for the first time since 1999. "It's a wonderful story, and this is the perfectly written script," Schuerholz said. We didn't write it, he more or less decided upon it. We provided the backdrop.