For more than 50 years, I have had a favorite baseball player. I'm not sure I was that adamant about it when I first became a fan in the late '50s -- maybe Mickey Mantle -- but by the mid '60s, I really admired the way Pete Rose played the game. He was my favorite player for more than 20 years, and even though I came to realize he wasn't as good a human being as he was a ballplayer, I still have an autographed bat of his among my memorabilia.

From the time Rose stopped playing until about 1993, I'm not sure I let myself have a favorite player. For one thing, I was covering baseball -- the Dodgers -- for a good chunk of that time, and I took the old rule about No Cheering in the Press Box seriously.

[caption id="attachment_1638" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Chipper Jones nears the end of a great career."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/chipper-jones-32212.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1638" title="Baltimore Orioles v Atlanta Braves" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/chipper-jones-32212-300x161.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="161" /></a>[/caption]

By the mid '90s. though, I had another favorite, one I followed from the very beginning of his career up to the present. And this year, I'll make several trips to Turner Field in Atlanta to watch that favorite play out his last season with the Braves.

<a title="Chipper Jones" href="http://www.chipperjones.com/home.htm">Chipper Jones</a> has had the sort of career that very few athletes have anymore. He spent his entire time in the game as a member of one organization. He was drafted by Atlanta, came up through the Braves' farm system and reached the majors for good -- after losing a season to a knee in injury -- in 1995.

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