In 1969, Pete Rose had his best offensive season, winning his second consecutive batting title with a .348 average, leading the league in hits (218) and runs (120), and hitting a career-best 16 home runs. He also won his first Gold Glove award as an outfielder that year. Rose’s .432 on-base percentage and .512 slugging percentage were also career highs, though his Reds narrowly missed the World Series, finishing second in the National League
Roberto Clemente’s life and baseball career are well known. Son of a sugarcane cropper. Both black and Latino. Double disadvantaged at a time when baseball was still integrating. He played 18 years for the Pittsburgh Pirates, with 15 All-Star games, 12 Gold Gloves, 3,000 hits, an MVP, and perhaps a legacy as the finest right fielder of his era.
On December 31,1972, Clemente was trying to deliver supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua when his plane crashed, killing him along with four others onboard.
As a child, Cleon Jones had visions of winning a World Series. Now, Jones is using that championship mindset to help the revitalization efforts in his beloved hometown, Africatown.
Ask the adults with gray in their hair. The ones who were pie-eyed, baseball-loving kids in that sprawling city of subways and fast-talking swagger back in 1969. They all knew Cleon Jones. He was the sweet-swinging hero of the 1969 New York Mets — dig that .340 average — who made, perhaps, the coolest last out in World Series history. As Davey Johnson’s towering fly ball fell to earth, Jones secured it in his mitt and knelt down, an unintentional genuflect to the Mets’ improbable one-year journey from lovable doormat to baseball.
Books about the “Miracle Mets,” as the 1969 team has come to be called, practically constitute their own section at Barnes & Noble. Jones’ memoir, “Coming Home: My Amazin’ Life with the New York Mets,” is the latest — and Jones’ second title. He penned a post-championship autobiography in 1970.
“Coming Home,” to be released on August 2, will satisfy fans of the perpetually doomed baseball team. They will learn of Jones’ ups and downs as one of the franchise’s best, if not most overlooked, players. They’ll also learn about Plateau, Alabama, where Jones was born and raised about 5 miles north of Mobile. What’s missing from the book is New York. There are no stories of Jones outrunning the night, no encounters with the city’s hip movers and shakers, not even a mention of how the pizza tasted.
New York was where he worked, but he always returned home — to the place he called Africatown. One reason was obvious. The other took time to emerge.
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