Youngest Rookie

To the big-league baseball scout, the ideal pitching prospect is a sturdy six-footer who can fire fastballs all through the long, hot afternoon. Such a pitcher was Iowa Farm Boy Bob Feller, who came off a sand lot at 17 and struck out 348 batters for the Cleveland Indians in 1946. Such a pitcher also is moonfaced Michael Jones, a $3,000-bonus rookie who plays for Johnson City, Tenn., a St. Louis Cardinals class D farm club. A rangy (6 ft., 174 Ibs.) right-hander with a smoky fastball, shy Mike Jones has yet another distinction: at 16, he is the youngest player in organized baseball.

Jones is drawing $4,000 a year (v. the major-league minimum of $7,000), and is already a growing legend in St. Louis, where he began his baseball career as a grammar-school nine-year-old. One day in 1958, while he was playing third base for the Brentwood Cardinals, a suburban St. Louis amateur team, the starting pitcher broke his leg, and the manager sent twelve-year-old Mike to the mound. Jones walked the first batter, struck out the next 18, won the game--and became the team's No. I pitcher. Over the next three seasons, he ran up such an impressive record that he attracted major-league scouts, among them a scout from the St. Louis Cardinals.

Before he could sign up with St. Louis, Jones had to get special permission from Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick, because he had not completed--or even started--high school. Classified as a "hardship case" (he was helping to support his parents and eight brothers and sisters), Jones gave his bonus to his family and headed for the Cardinals' spring training camp at Homestead. Fla.. where he worked out under the watchful eye of a farm system manager, Al Unser. "He would run until he got tired." says Unser. "and then he'd quit. We finally talked him into the idea that it was necessary for him to run a little harder.''

In Johnson City, Coach Joe Lucco has put Jones to work in relief assignments. "Mike has a strong arm," he explains, "but we're just nursing him along. We don't let him pitch more than 70 balls at a time. Then he gets four days of rest." Object: to have Jones ready for the big league after several more seasons of seasoning. His coaches think that shy Mike Jones will make it.

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