Heroes come and heroes go, and at some point in your life you realize<a title="Heroes" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077669/" target="_self"> a hero ain't nothing but a sandwich</a>.

I'm not sure when it was I realized that being a good player in a professional sport didn't necessarily make someone a person worthy of admiring. Maybe it dates back to the early '70s when basketball player Spencer Haywood made a great statement about heroism.

He said that athletes weren't heroes. He said parents raising four kids and giving them good values on poverty-level incomes were the real heroes.

I think it was after that that I stopped calling Pete Rose -- yes, Pete Rose -- my hero and just started referring to him as my favorite player. I admire the way he played the game, the effort he always gave. I certainly didn't admire the fact that he said the only book he ever read was "The Pete Rose Story."

By the early '90s, when Rose was long gone from baseball and had exposed himself as somewhat of a scumbag anyway, I was in the market for a new favorite player. For some reason, I settled on Atlanta's Chipper Jones. For most of the last 15 years, Jones has been my favorite player, to the point where I always look at the box scores to see what he did the night before, and I usually try to have him on my fantasy baseball teams.

I admired the way he played the game, and I particularly liked the fact that he stayed with one team throughout his entire career. When he won the batting title in 2008, at the pretty advanced age of 36, I was happy for him. He had a mediocre season last year and wasn't doing much better this year, and I admired the fact that he said if he couldn't play at a level that made him proud, he would retire and walk away from the rest of his big contract.

[caption id="attachment_589" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Chipper Jones&#39; injury"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/jones081210.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-589" title="jones081210" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/jones081210.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="232" /></a>[/caption]

The other night he got hurt, and even though he expressed optimism about the injury, it turned out he had torn his anterior cruciate ligament. It's ironic that the injury, which might end his career, was the same one he had at age 22 that caused him to delay his rookie season by a year.

Is Chipper Jones finished at age 38?

I hope not, but I know he's probably very near the end of his career. Maybe he can rehab his knee enough to play one more season and go out on his terms. That would be nice, especially since I'll be living in Georgia next year and hope to make it to Atlanta for a few games.

At any rate, I'm going to need a new favorite player soon. I'm thinking maybe Jason Heyward or Brian McCann.