Altanta Braves Chipper Jones walks to the dugout after presenting the lineup card before a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park in Pittsburgh Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012.PITTSBURGH – The storybook ending for Chipper Jones would have been putting a fastball into the Allegheny River.
At age 40, however, Jones doesn’t try to mash the baseball so much as massage it. Instead, the Atlanta Braves third baseman had to settle for bookending his 19-year career with pinch-hit singles.
Jones rapped an A.J. Burnett pitch to right field in his final regular season at-bat and the Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-0 on Wednesday.
“I’d like to thank A.J. for coming right at me,” Jones said with a laugh after collecting the 2,726th and final regular-season hit of his 19-year career.
Jones entered as a pinch hitter in the sixth. Batting left-handed, he took the first pitch he saw from Burnett and laced it to the outfield, proving a nice bit of symmetry. Jones singled in the first at-bat of his career against Cincinnati on Sept. 14, 1993.