Chipper Jones Joins ESPN Baseball Broadcast Booth As Analyst

Bruce Haring
·2 min read

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New York Mets fans know him by his given name of Larry. ESPN viewers will soon know him as an analyst.

Larry “Chipper” Jones, a baseball Hall of Famer, will serve as an analyst on 20 games of ESPN’s Wednesday Night Baseball broadcasts, according to an Atlanta Journal Constitution report on Saturday.

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Jones will replace David Ross, who left the booth to become the manager of the Chicago Cubs.

“A lot of people don’t know this, but if I hadn’t played baseball, if I had gone to college, I would have majored in communications,” Jones told the AJC website. “I wanted to be a broadcaster. I really have fun talking the game. I feel like I have something to impart upon the people tuning in, and I have fun doing it. I get the chance to do it on probably the biggest stage you can, maybe next to ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ (on ESPN).”

Jones was an all-time Atlanta Braves hero during some of the team’s dominant years. He hit 468 home runs and had 2,726 hits in his career.

If I had to sit in the ESPN booth and talk about religion or politics or astrophysics, obviously I would be out of my element,” Jones said. “But this is something that I’ve lived my whole life. I’ve stood 60 feet, 6 inches from the best in the world, and I’ve played third base for two decades, and I have a lot of input and a lot of knowledge on the subject. I know it takes a little something to be able to get your point across, but that doesn’t intimidate me.”

Jones said watching former teammates in broadcasting gave him confidence.

“I’m not going to sit here and say that my way is the way, but I feel like I can do a lot like Smoltzy (John Smoltz) and Glav (Tom Glavine) and Frenchy (Jeff Francoeur) and those guys, who have become pretty good at their craft in trying to get across what it’s like to be in the game.”

 

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