Just turned 36, Chipper Jones is passing a rare threshold in contemporary baseball. He has been a Brave for half his life, 18 years in one organization. Some nations don't last so long.

Jones does not mark time that way. He dates himself to a Saturday afternoon in June 1987, when the Braves played Cincinnati at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Seven home runs, 20 hits, a couple of ejections. Braves Dale Murphy and Ken Griffey homered back-to-back in the third, after which the Reds' Bill Gullickson plunked the Braves' Andres Thomas, starting a brawl. Braves won, 8-6.

Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)

Braves third baseman Chipper Jones closed out April leading the majors with a .410 batting average.

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A 15-year-old farm kid, up from Central Florida with his family, drank in every drop from the upper deck, his first major league game. It was the day Chipper Jones and the Braves met.

"And I was hooked," Jones recalled recently. "I can remember walking on the concourse and stepping out and seeing that beautiful green baseball field and all the people, and just saying, 'I want to play here one day.' Little did I know it was going to be my home.

"But I knew I wanted to be there and I knew when I got there that I wanted to make a splash."

Jones closed out April leading the majors with an eye-rubbing .410 batting average, but that was not a feat unto its own. Dating back to last year's All-Star break, his average is .362. Since 2006, he has hit .339, unmatched by anyone in either league (1,000 at-bat minimum).

But Jones' real splash washes across Page 401 of the Braves' media guide, where the franchise tracks its most proficient hitters dating to 1900. Quiet but steadfast, Jones has climbed all over the lists: best on-base percentage, second-most doubles, third-most home runs, RBI and total bases.

Some of the marks set by the incomparable Hank Aaron Jones will never match. But when his Braves days are done he could well rank first or second in a dozen offensive categories.

And two weeks past his 36th birthday, this spring has provided a snapshot of a hitter still in his prime, still hooked a half-lifetime later.

"Once you get that mentality and that confidence that every time you walk to the plate you can do something ... there's not a better feeling in the world that swinging a bat and bringing 50,000 people out of their seats," he said. "All of those things really drive me to continue doing what I've done."

New teammate wowed

At Georgia Tech and then as a cross-league slugger, Mark Teixeira never had a full appreciation for Jones until he began hitting behind him last summer.

"His natural ability is probably second to none in baseball," said Teixeira, who moved into the locker next to Jones. "He doesn't have to work like most guys, he doesn't have to think like most guys.

"Now, you put his work ethic on top of that? That's what makes him so great."

Because Jones has been out there for so long — he can pass the 2,000-game mark this season — fresh perspective like Teixeira's is rare. To close followers of the Braves, Jones is the comfortable old sofa in the family room, more appreciated than prized.

What would he be, had his career been played out in New York, Los Angeles or Boston? Among switch hitters, only Mickey Mantle (536) and Eddie Murray (504) have hit more home runs than Jones (394). This is an historic career.

"He's gotten cheated as far as his exposure," said Pat Corrales, a longtime Braves coach who's now a bench coach in Washington. "He hasn't gotten the coverage [New York Mets third baseman] David Wright has gotten in three years.

"He [Jones] has been doing it for 15 years, and that's a shame."

In those 15 years, Jones has learned what is worth worrying about. Some fans will always ride him for a perceived lack of passion; some will never forget his highly publicized admission of marital infidelity in 1998. Jones has come to realize there is always another game tomorrow.

Tom Glavine returned from five years in New York this spring to find the third baseman had changed.

"My personal opinion is, I think he's grown up a lot," Glavine said. "He seems to be more comfortable with who he is. That's all part of growing up.

"It's hard enough that we worry about what we're doing numbers-wise. But when you also worry about what other people think about you and what your reputation is, that's a lot of stuff to take on. I think sooner or later, it's the old cliché; you can't please everybody."

So Jones applies his craft by the at-bat, by the inning, night by night, leaving the introspection for someone else.

"I think early in my career, I put so much pressure on myself to produce, and it was that pressure that allowed me to be successful," Jones said. "Now, it's more the opposite. I don't live, breathe, drink, eat, sleep baseball anymore. When I leave the park, I'm as much a family man as I can be and try to forget about the game as much as possible."

Quiet leadership

Whenever the Braves fly somewhere, Brian McCann takes the seat behind Jeff Francoeur, who takes the seat behind Jones. More trips than not, the dominant topic is hitting.

"Those are some of the best times for me," Francoeur said, "because you pick up things I never would have dreamed of in my life."

Jones' leadership skills have always tended toward the unspoken. Occasions when has tried to impose himself through public remarks have not always gone well. Twice, during the 1996 World Series and the 1998 NLCS, he was called out by teammates behind clubhouse doors for saying too much.

Now the senior citizen among the position players, Jones' silence can puzzle the younger set. Bullpen coach Eddie Perez said that when younger players come to ask him what is bugging the third baseman, Perez smiles knowingly and answers, "Nothing."

"Chipper's not good to get up in front of everybody here and tell them what he thinks," Francoeur said. "But I don't know anyone better to get on a plane and talk one-on-one for two hours and explain exactly what he thinks and what we need to do. And that's good.

"Every once in a while, you need a guy like him to tell you, 'You know what? You're better than what you're getting out of yourself.' "

It is a cruelty of baseball that once a player truly grasps how to play the game, he is too often too old to do it anymore. Jones has missed nearly a quarter of all games since 2004 due to injury, but he still gets more out of his game than he often did during his 20s.

He is also, by baseball standards, a bargain. After volunteering to restructure his contract in 2005 so the club could sign pitcher Tim Hudson, Jones' salary of $12.33 million isn't among the top 50 in the game. He isn't even among the five best-paid third basemen.

He has one option year remaining on his contract, which he can trigger by making 450 plate appearances this season. What happens after that, he says, is up to the Braves. He believes he has five more years in him, although changing teams this late in his career "just to accrue numbers" is not appealing.

Until then, his assault on Page 401 continues, a remarkable talent swinging his way through the final quarter of an uncommon career, chasing after the Braves who went before him.

"That drives me. It really does," Jones said. "I mean, you walk into the stadium and you see how historic this franchise has been over the years and you see [on the outfield wall] the names and the numbers. And you think, well, not only are all those guys Braves Hall of Famers. But they're Hall of Famers and first-ballot Hall of Famers at that.

"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a goal to be mentioned in the same breath with the Eddie Mathews and the Hank Aarons and the Murphys."

No lie. He already is.